I’ve done my reading and I know this problem has been addressed several times … but I still do not have an answer! Until I read this site I thought I was the only girl who couldn’t reach orgasm from sex (so thank you!) I now realize I am not, and understand that nothing is wrong with me, but it still sucks! I don’t want to spend my life never being satisfied by sex. It is extremely frustrating for me, as well as I know it is for my partners who spend so much time and effort trying to satisfy me. I know it is hard to generalize because all women are different and enjoy different things, but aside from the common “find out what you enjoy” answer, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me anything that may be able to make a person like me orgasm from sex! I just want to be able to enjoy sex, and when you know you’re not going to be fully satisfied it gets boring pretty quick. I feel like I am always being teased! Yes, men can make me come from outer stimulation, but it takes a very long time, and we all know boys are impatient. So because I very rarely get to fully enjoy sex I am getting all excited just to be let down. At this point I am considering giving up intercourse all together! Please help me! I don’t know what else to do!

Heather Corinna replies:

There is a lot to unpack here, but I first want to make sure we’re on the same page with some basics, particularly since my sense is you don’t have an answer to this because you’re not asking yourself the right questions.

You’re saying you can’t have an orgasm from sex, but want to. You’re also saying that there are kinds of sex where you do reach orgasm. Sex can be a whole lot of things. When you’re saying you don’t reach orgasm from sex, you actually appear to be talking about only one kind of sex, vaginal intercourse. You’re saying you want to reach orgasm during that one kind of sex and, so far, you can’t.

You’re using terms like enjoyment or satisfaction interchangeably with orgasm. That’s a problem, because they’re not the same things, even though they can be, and often are, interrelated. Someone can enjoy and feel satisfied with a given kind of sex, or their sex lives as a whole, but not reach orgasm sometimes or at a given time. Alternately, someone can reach orgasm, but find they don’t feel satisfied and/or didn’t enjoy themselves. By all means, for many people, experiencing orgasm is part of enjoyment and satisfaction with sex. Orgasm is only one piece of those things, and also doesn’t have to be a piece sometimes at all. For sure, orgasms can be seriously awesome. I’m not suggesting there’s anything wrong with wanting to orgasm and liking orgasm. Rather, I’m saying that orgasms alone are not likely to mean a person feels satisfied by sex or their sex lives or enjoys sex or their sex lives.

Even though it might seem silly, let’s clearly define those terms for our purposes:

orgasm: the conclusion of the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle, or the neurological/physiological peak of sexual response. It’s controlled by, and largely takes place within, the involuntary nervous system. It usually includes quick cycles of muscle contraction in the lower pelvis and muscular spasms in other areas of the body, and a general euphoric sensation. Orgasm and those sensations usually last a handful of seconds (though that euphoric feeling can continue for a little while longer than that).

satisfaction: the sense of feeling satisfied; the fulfillment or gratification of a desire, need, or appetite; pleasure (enjoyment, bliss, happiness) or contentment (feeling happy or pleased) derived from such gratification. When we talk about sexual satisfaction, we can be talking about feeling satisfied in a given moment, with one specific sexual encounter, in a given sexual relationship, and/or with our sex lives and sexuality as a whole.

enjoyment: having a good time, having fun, to take pleasure in or with.

Though it might seem sillier still, I’m going to tell you something about my house.

In order to heat the front of it, I need to make a fire in my wood stove. If I don’t, not only will we be very cold, but if it’s really cold outside, our pipes might freeze, which would be seriously bad. I can’t just flick a switch to make that happen; there are things I need and need to do to make that fire. It takes specific stuff, and it takes my attention and effort.

I need the stove, obviously. I need a lighter or matches. I need wood—both logs and kindling—and some kind of paper to get it all started. The wood has to be dry enough, and the flue of the stove has to be open. I also need at least a little bit of time to do all of this, and this particular wood stove has its own particular ways of behaving, so unlike other stoves I’ve had before, for instance, it needs a little more direct attention, and is very specific about how the wood is arranged.

So long as I have all of those things, I can usually make a fire. Not always—sometimes there’s still a fluke—but usually. So, when I have all of that and get it all going, I can make that fire, warm the house, and keep the pipes from freezing. I can achieve that particular goal, get that task done. That’s good stuff.

But what’s even better stuff is when it’s not just about making the fire to heat the house, when the task of making a fire is much more than a task, and the way I do it isn’t so goal-oriented. What’s even better, what’s really lovely, is when I have the time and am in the frame of mind to really enjoy, savor, and devote energy to the whole process, and when what I’m doing isn’t and doesn’t feel like a task, but is and feels like a great way to spend my time with something that feeds my senses, engages my heart and mind, and becomes a wonderful practice in fire-making.

When I go about making a fire that way, I might start by putting on my favorite sweater and boots and walking outside into the crisp air to get wood. That air smells and feels good on my face, plus my sweater keeps me warm and cozy. Looking at the trees all around reminds me of where the wood comes from, how grateful I am for it, and how beautiful the world I live in is. I’ll probably stand out there for a few minutes to soak it all in. Then, I’ll gather the wood in my arms, which will engage my muscles and make me feel strong. I’ll bring it inside; sort all the things I need; settle down in front of the fire; arrange the kindling, wood, and paper inside the stove; and light the paper aflame, which is pleasing to my eyes. Pieces of the wood will start to pop and crackle. I love that sound. The colors of the fire are magnetic, energizing, and calming—all at the same time. I start to smell the fire getting going. I love that smell, and I know that later on, it’ll be in my hair and on my sweater for me to enjoy all day.

I blow into the fire to really get it revved up, which feels good to my mouth, my face, and my lungs. I focus on my breath and what it can do, which relaxes and centers me. I’m patient with the fire, which also makes me feel good, because I’m one of those folks who does think it’s a virtue, so I feel thoughtful, relaxed, and virtuous.

In time, and how much time always varies, the fire usually winds up roaring. It’s beautiful. The heat feels great on my skin; the smell is fantastic. Sitting near it with my coffee afterwards adds to my enjoyment. The coffee even tastes a little different, because of the smell of the fire. I don’t rush away, I sit and relax, revisiting the whole process in my mind, enjoying where it is now in the moment. I got the fire I wanted and needed, I accomplished that goal, but I also just had and made a whole bunch of really lovely things happen that were not only great all by themselves, but which made the matter of having a fire, of that task, about a million times more wonderful and feel much less like a task and much more like a treat.

Not having an orgasm won’t freeze your pipes or land you with hypothermia, but all the same, my fire is your orgasm. It’s the most basic goal, and like orgasm, it’s also something that can’t just happen any old time without whatever specific things my particular fire needs. That goal is part of your enjoyment and satisfaction, but only a part of it. The process of getting to that goal—if you even do get there—is what’s much more related to sexual enjoyment and satisfaction. My process of really taking the time with fire-building, and engaging all my senses, is like the kind of sex that people tend to find most often leaves them feeling satisfied and where they really enjoy themselves, even without an orgasm.

For sure, if I needed a fire and couldn’t start one up, that would be frustrating, but it’d be a lot more frustrating without having engaged in all those steps and enjoyed them. When I do all of that, even if I walk away fire-less and need to try again later, I feel pretty OK because I still got some things that felt good out of the process. If I tried to do it all kind of halfway, in a big rush, or when I just wasn’t in the mood, and couldn’t make a fire then, I’d feel a lot more frustrated, and I’m willing to bet this is part of why you’re feeling so frustrated too.

On the whole, people who go about sex in a way we call goal-oriented, or product-oriented, not only tend to orgasm less often, they tend to feel less satisfied with sex and their sex lives. People who tend to be more process-oriented in the sex they have, with partners and on their own in masturbation, tend to be more orgasmic and also tend to feel more satisfied. If you’re going to have a goal in sex, and want sex that really is enjoyable and feels satisfying, the goal needs to be engaging in that whole process, not just a given or final product or outcome, like orgasm. And if you’re not interested in the whole process, or find you don’t like it, even if and when you made orgasm a goal that you reached, you’re probably going to still feel unsatisfied.

When it comes to sex (not just intercourse) and feeling satisfied, that usually involves a whole bunch of things. When we listen to people talk candidly about sex or look at big sexuality surveys like the Durex Sexual Wellbeing survey or the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, we can see that feelings of sexual satisfaction are about way more than orgasm. Orgasm is often a piece of that picture, but all by itself? Meh. One study found that only 40 percent of people of all genders reaching orgasm reported that that alone left them feeling highly physically and emotionally satisfied (Sex in America: A Definitive Survey, 1994).

The big picture of what satisfaction is and what makes people feel satisfied sexually is a lot bigger than orgasm. It includes things like being in good mental and physical health, personal and emotional self-expression during sex, feeling emotionally connected to a partner (not just for women, either!), and being satisfied with the relationship you’re in overall, such as by having real chemistry with your partner, feeling cared for and respected, good communication, creativity, humor, spontaneity and variety (even with one partner, and this also means doing more than just intercourse), having sexual fantasies, feeling relaxed and not stressed, having sex as often as one would like, engaging in one’s own masturbation, good body image and self-image, and more. Our life histories even play a role, including what our first sexual experiences was like, how we were reared in terms of sexuality and our interpersonal relationships in childhood and adolescence, and even whether or not we’ve had good sex education.

It’s possible that you, like most people, feel you need to reach orgasm with any kind of sex as part of being satisfied or to enjoying yourself. That’s OK, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But, just like with my fire, people tend to need particular things to reach orgasm most of the time, and can’t just orgasm any old way, with everyone, or from everything. You already read enough to know that most women do not reach orgasm from intercourse all by itself consistently. You also seem to already know at least some ways you can reach orgasm. One thing it seems like you’re not getting is that if you need to reach orgasm from every kind of sex you have, especially without the things you know get you there, that’s not going to work. It seems like you also aren’t getting that the reason you feel dissatisfied, bored, teased, or impatient when it comes to vaginal intercourse probably isn’t about not reaching orgasm. People enjoy and feel satisfied with loads of things they don’t reach orgasm from, and usually like participating in many sexual activities that do not, all by themselves, result in orgasm for one or both partners, unless they’re only in sex for the orgasm or really don’t want to be doing whatever it is they are doing with whomever they are doing it with.

What I hear you saying is that you feel like intercourse is boring or unsatisfying for you, because you either don’t know if you’re going to orgasm or you know you are not. Yet, with any kind of sex, even kinds where we or others have reached orgasm before, no one can ever count on reaching orgasm. Even if we orgasm from a given thing every time for years, at some point or another, chances are we’re not going to reach orgasm that way. As well, if we make the “goal” of sex orgasm, we’re often not going to reach that goal, and even when we do, it can feel half-arsed, especially in sex with partners. I suspect you’re not bored because you’re not reaching orgasm, but because of other issues, and because product-oriented sex tends to be pretty darn boring, period.

You say that “we all know boys are impatient.” The thing is, I’d not say that we all know that at all. That’s not everyone’s experience. Impatient or hasty lovers come in all genders, as can patient and responsive lovers. If you’re finding that your sexual partners are impatient, I think you might want to consider that that’s not because they’re men, but instead because you’re perhaps not choosing the best partners for you. I also suspect their impatience may be connected with your own or to them feeling desperate to engage you because you’re not very engaged with them, which can feel awfully uncomfortable in sex with a partner.

It sounds to me like you’re impatient yourself, even though you’re expressing your partners as the ones being impatient. They may very well be impatient too, but I think this is also your issue. You say you feel like you’re being teased, only to be let down. Sexually speaking, drawing out pleasure and desire is usually pretty fun and exciting. Of course, for it to feel that way, we have to enjoy what we’re doing, and when we’re having sex with a partner, really want to be with that partner—rather than masturbating—enjoy that person and like being sexual with them. If we aren’t really into all of that, it’s no wonder we want to race toward the finish line and just be done with it. The good news is that you get to choose your partners and interactions and choose what goes on in them. If sex feels boring with someone or with all your partners, you get to choose not to have sex with those partners or any partners, or take the time with partners to find out what you feel excited by with them.

You sound like you also are short on patience for experimenting with partners in sex. That’s a problem, because often enough, it does take a good deal of experimentation and patience to find out what we like and what works for us alone and in any given sexual partnership. I also wonder if when you’re having sex with partners, you’re really engaging with them. If you’re bored, I’m guessing not. If you’re not connecting in a real way—not just with your genitals—this might be part of why your partners want to please you so badly: They may be trying to find a way to engage you, to have you be all there.

That pressure to orgasm or be pleased needs to stop. That’s something else that simply doesn’t create the kind of emotional and psychological environment where any of us can really enjoy ourselves and just relax in the sex we’re having so that we are likely to both reach orgasm and feel satisfied. Feeling desperate doesn’t feel good, whether it’s about being desperate to please someone or being desperate to be pleased ourselves. Partners driving themselves up a tree to try and please us all the time can give us some clues about what they feel they’re not getting, what we might not be giving them (hint: it isn’t usually orgasm), or about if one or both of us is really in the right space to be sexual together. If we’re all freaking out and desperate, we can know we are not in the right space, at all.

I have a strong feeling that the biggest reasons you’re not feeling satisfied with any given kind of sex or enjoying any given kind of sex are not really about orgasm. Instead I think it’s more likely about things like not really doing things that turn you on and feel good, pushing yourself to try and like kinds of sex or partners you really don’t, not doing or asking for sexual activities in a way that feel good to you, not fully engaging and connecting with partners and communicating with them, possibly being with partners you’re not actually all that interested in being with in partnership in the first place, and maybe even being with partners before you’re yet in the right place in your own personal and sexual development for partnered sex to be enjoyable or satisfying for you (and them).

Here’s my advice, which is only that: my advice. I’d first strongly suggest you take time off from sexual partners and be your own sexual partner, all by yourself, for a good while. In other words, that you make masturbation your sex life for now. I just don’t think sexual partners sound like the right choice for you right now or what you want.

With your own masturbation—which is the way most people learn to be orgasmic—you can have an environment for sex without pressure; better identify what you like, want, and need; and get to know your own body and sexual self better. I suggest you come to your masturbation not thinking about how to learn to orgasm, but about how to learn to enjoy yourself in the way I do when I take the time to build my fire and savor that whole process. If you’re of age to purchase sex toys, you might invest in a vibrator and a toy for vaginal insertion. In combination with those two and your own hands, you’ll probably be able to get a better idea of what you like and what you don’t. With vaginal insertion, you can also find out what you might need to be happening before you begin any of that and also during. You may discover that that kind of stimulation can feel good and/or bring you to orgasm, but only when you’re in certain positions, when it’s very targeted (as in, not something more general like intercourse, but something more like fingers) or when it’s in conjunction with external clitoral, vulval, or other body stimulation at the same time. You may even discover that when you are way more turned on first, feel really comfortable and are in a different headspace than I suspect you’ve been in, that you can reach orgasm sometimes with only intravaginal and internal clitoral stimulation alone.

I’d also strongly suggest you invest time and energy into thinking about your sexual partnerships, what you’ve had in them, and what you haven’t. How do you feel about them? Are you really into them and are they really into you? Do your knees knock and does your head feel dreamy just being around them without sex? Do you feel relaxed and comfortable with them, and do they seem to with you? Do you love spending time with them and love being sexual or sensual with them, even with things like kissing that probably don’t result in orgasm? When you’re sexual with others, are you feeling really turned on before anyone’s clothes come off? Are you openly communicating what you want to them, and are they doing that with you? Is their pleasure just as exciting as your own? Do you want sex to last longer, rather than hoping you can just get off and get gone? Are you as invested in their feeling satisfied as you are in your own satisfaction? Are you connecting in ways that aren’t just sexual? Are you choosing partners who are patient, and who you also feel patient with yourself?

If and when you go back to sex with partners, I’d suggest you first make sure you’re only choosing partners who, when you ask yourself those kinds of questions, the answers are all yes. Those partners are always harder to find, so this is another place where you may need to learn more patience.

When you do connect with a partner like that, take your time getting to intercourse. Heck, take your time getting to any kind of sex at all. Enjoy those feelings of sexual anticipation. When you do start getting to genital sex, go slow. Take your time, both each time and overall. I have a feeling you haven’t been as turned on as you could be with any kind of sex, so stretch things out and see if you don’t feel how your body probably feels a little different than it has in the past. Communicate with each other. You know that, so far, intercourse isn’t the way you orgasm. So, put that out there, making clear that who knows if that will always be the case, but that for now, you know it’s not. If you know there are sexual activities you really like and others you think are ho-hum—a list like this might help you to clarify those—put that out there. Share your sexual likes and dislikes with each other. Since you’ll hopefully have identified more of what you think you need to feel satisfied with sex—physically, emotionally, interpersonally—before you come back to sex with partners, communicate that as well, and ask your partner to share what makes them feel satisfied, too.

If at any time with a partner, you find the process feels like a drag and you’re just wanting to get to the end, check in with yourself and check in with your partner. Don’t just lie around waiting for sex to be over and hope for an orgasm. Make sure you’re not having sex with a partner when what you really want is masturbation, or just to get yourself off. Only choose to have sex with others when feeling engaged the whole time feels awesome, is enjoyable, and where all the moments of sex, not just an orgasm, feel satisfying.

If the whole lot of this, even with time given just to masturbation, even with making different choices around partners, still feels like a drag or not all you hoped for, then it may be that other parts of your life and self need to be more exciting and satisfying, not just sex. Sometimes people are looking for sex to fill in for other things in their lives that are missing, or to provide all the excitement and satisfaction in their lives. Sex can’t do that, though, because it’s just one part of who we are. If the rest of our lives suck or feel blah, or we’re not giving our whole selves enough energy and attention, sex won’t fix that, even if it’s the best sex on earth.

I’m going to leave you with a few pieces I think will help you out. Then, I’m going to go build a fire, one enjoyable step at a time. I strongly suggest that whether it’s about your wood stove or your sex life, that’s what you go ahead and do too.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/07/26/get-real-i-dont-want-to-spend-my-life-never-being-satisfied-by-sex/feed/0Get Real! Can I Start Dating When I Have a Mental Illness?http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/06/28/can-i-start-dating-when-i-have-a-mental-illness/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=can-i-start-dating-when-i-have-a-mental-illness
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/06/28/can-i-start-dating-when-i-have-a-mental-illness/#commentsFri, 28 Jun 2013 21:03:50 +0000http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/06/28/can-i-start-dating-when-i-have-a-mental-illness/

Does having a mental illness mean you can't have healthy sexual or romantic relationships, or that someone else can't have them with you? Nope.

I’m a seventeen-year-old girl and ten months ago, I was diagnosed with a light form of pseudologica fantasia, usually known as mythomania. The basis of this illness is an addiction to telling lies. I’m seeing a therapist for this and she’s a very kind and competent woman, but she has warned me that this illness is usually hard to cure and there are few known cases where the therapy was actually able to get rid of the problem. I’m doing a better job at keeping it under control than I used to but the urge is still there. I just keep it under wraps and tackle the illness on my own, with the support of my nuclear family. The thing is, one of my friends has recently expressed a romantic interest in me, and I would very much like to get involved in a relationship with him, but this would mean disclosing my problem to him, because of course I’m not going to enter a relationship without telling the other person involved about this first.

I’m deadly frightened to tell him because this is something I am really ashamed of. I trust him and know my secret would be safe with him, but I’m terrified that he’ll suddenly find me disgusting, or frightening, or that he’ll never be able to trust me again – because honestly, who would fully trust someone who’s a compulsive liar? There’s so much stigma attached to lying that I sometimes feel broken. Like a leper, almost. This is getting a bit too dramatic for my taste, but that’s the only way to express how I feel. Do you have any advice about this situation and/or about being in a relationship when suffering from a mental illness? Thanks in advance.

Heather Corinna replies:

You’re right, there certainly is social stigma attached to lying. Really, it’s the usual motives for dishonesty which have the big bad rap, and we can probably agree that’s actually sound, but even though you know you don’t have an intent to deceive or manipulate anyone, and you have an illness that can compel you to lie, rather than lying being something you actively choose to do, I can understand why you feel the weight of all that regardless. Add that to the stigma attached to nearly any mental illness, and it’s unfortunately all too easy to feel very isolated, ashamed, scared about social interactions, and vulnerable. On top of all of that? Starting to date, period, can be mighty daunting too. I’m so sorry that you’re feeling the way that you are right now; it sounds pretty overwhelming.

If it helps, I don’t think mental illness is something anyone needs to feel ashamed about.

I also think it’s important to try to keep in mind that the fact it’s stigmatized doesn’t mean that stigma is sound or right. Often what stigma demonstrates most is a lack of education, understanding, or compassion on behalf of those applying stigma. Mental illness is not a choice, just like having freckles, autism, or cerebral palsy aren’t choices. It’s something that happened to you entirely outside your control, something that doesn’t make you any less a good or valuable person than anyone without mental illness. It also sounds like you’ve been doing all you can and working hard to manage it well, which is the best anyone can do. No shame in any of that. And if you need an extra little boost right now, this page might be a help too. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think Abe Lincoln, Virginia Woolf, Vincent Van Gogh, John Keats, or Issac Newton—all people who had mental illnesses—were disgusting or frightening. I think that the fact they did the amazing things they did with mental illness makes them more awesome and exceptional, not less.

I also think someone thinking this deeply about these things, as you are, who is considering taking a pretty big emotional risk by disclosing something she’s scared about for the other person’s benefit? That person sounds very trustworthy to me, and like someone very invested in building trust and being very mindful about it—more mindful than most.

Whether we’re talking about a condition like yours, depression, borderline personality disorder, anxiety, or any other mental illness or mood disorder, the very first thing I’d always recommend is doing all you can to get a good mental healthcare provider to work with—you’ve already got that covered.

That person, I think, should be your lead point person for these questions about intimate relationships.

If you haven’t already talked about all of this with your therapist, that’s the first thing I’d suggest. I think the best first step is a fact-finding mission and an in-depth talk with someone educated about your condition who also knows you and how you have dealt with it so far. That way, you can have plenty of reliable information to consider in making choices with dating and disclosure.

If you’re unsure about what to ask her, I’d suggest questions like:

What is your opinion about someone with my illness, in the place I’m at with managing it, and romantic relationships?

What challenges do you feel I’ll face when it comes to an intimate relationship? What about a person I’m involved with? What might their challenges be?

Do you feel like I’m yet in the place where I can successfully pursue and maintain an intimate relationship? If you don’t think now is the right time for me to be dating, can you give me some things I can work on so I can work toward getting there?

What are some things you suggest people with my condition tell potential partners or even just people they’re dating? When do you suggest they tell them?

What are some tools you’ve seen other people with my condition use in their intimate relationships to deal with some of the particular challenges it might pose?

This (you describe this guy to her, your relationship with him so far, and what he says he’s looking for with you right now) is the opportunity I’m presented with. Does it sound like one you think could be beneficial and manageable for me?

What, if anything, do you think I need to accept I can’t do right now in terms of relationships? What do you think I can do?

How do you think I need to go about starting to date differently—if you do think I need to do anything differently—than someone without my condition might?

What are things you think I’d need someone I’m dating to be able to handle and manage when it comes to me, and vice versa? What kinds of people might not be a great fit? (For example, I’d imagine someone who already has a hard time trusting people would probably be a poor fit.)

If you do think it’s OK for me to try dating right now, can we come up with some tools and check-ins together so I can feel more confident, and less fearful, about trying this?

Once you have that information, I’d then take a look at how you feel in general when it comes to feeling up to dating. After all, figuring out if we’re ready to date in general, and then if we’re in the right head space right now, or with a given person, to do that, is something for everyone to do, not just someone with mental illness.

For instance, you voice what sounds like a big fear of rejection. That’s understandable, but if we’re going to start dating, rejection—or even people just taking a pass on being with us at some point—is something that’s always going to be a possibility, something we will always need to be up to dealing with, because it could always happen. I’d also do a self-check on how able you feel to take a pass on someone’s interest or not move things forward when that’s not really what you want. If and when someone feels like someone dating them would be doing them some monumental favor, it can be all too easy to have a hard time setting limits and boundaries. Pursuing intimate relationships likely to be healthy involves the self-esteem of everyone involved being in a good place; we’ve got to think well of and value ourselves as much as we do others, have some measure of resilience, and not be in the spot where we’re so emotionally hungry, we’ll eat anything, if you catch my drift.

Sometimes we’re in the right places in ways like that for dating or more serious relationships, and sometimes we’re just not. Sometimes, too, we’ll meet someone awesome, have great chemistry, and have an interest in exploring things further, but the timing is just off. It might be a bad time because we don’t feel up to possible rejection, because they’re in a last, tough year of school, or because someone is in the thick of a family crisis. And if and when that happens, everything else can be golden, but we might—or they might—take a pass and maybe just try again later when the timing is better.

By all means, I’d also consult your guts. What’s your instinct about all of this? Our intuitive feelings are feelings we can usually trust and do well giving a lot of weight to.

That all said, is this a close friend? It sounds like he is. I wonder if you’ve thought about telling him about your illness regardless?

Like you already voiced, having mental illness can make a person feel isolated, and all the more so if it’s something you’re not sharing with any friends so that you’ve got them as an extra support sometimes, or just feel like your friends really know you. Keeping this a secret from everyone also might be making those feelings of shame feel a lot bigger than they would without the silence.

Having at least one trusted friend who you can tell about this, and who knows about this, would probably be very good for you. This has got to feel like a pretty big burden to carry around without support outside your family and therapist. It might be that the simplest (which is not to say the easiest, or magically not at all scary for you) answer to all of this is to tell this guy either way. Another option, if you have more than this one friend, might be to first try telling a different—but still deeply trusted—friend about this first, rather than starting with a disclosure to someone where there’s romantic interest too, since that can obviously bump up the pressure and the fears around telling considerably.

If you do decide to share this information with this guy, and, in alignment with some of your fears here, it turns out he either can’t handle that information, or decides he isn’t OK dating you because of your illness, I want to tell you something.

I know, and you know, that this is something you can’t separate from yourself. In other words, it’s part of who you are, it doesn’t live neatly in some box separate from you. But not only is this something that is more of who you are than anything else—you’re a whole, big person made up of lots of things, not just your illness—someone else’s reaction to it, if they feel afraid, intimidated, or even really negative, also isn’t just about you.

Someone who decides that they either feel they can’t or just don’t want to deal with dating you because of your illness, specifically, is a lot like someone deciding they don’t want to or can’t handle being with someone who, for example, has a serious physical illness or has had some big trauma in their past. Sure, that’s about those things, but it’s also about the other person.

Not everyone is always going to be up to extra or specific challenges with a relationship, and that’s at least as much about them as it is about you. I hear and understand that you feel negatively about yourself because of this, but I’d encourage you to try and own those feelings as your own and not assume that someone who didn’t want to date you because of your condition think the things about you and it that you do. Someone who pans on dating you when they know about this, and because of this, may well not think any of those things. Those are your thoughts and feelings, but they may not be theirs.

They might instead be thinking things like, “That sounds like I’m going to have to spend time educating myself about this, and I don’t feel like I have that time,” or “I’m really worried that it’s something I won’t be able to handle, and I might hurt this already vulnerable person,” or “I really wanted something more light, this feels heavy right from the start,” or “If myself and her family and therapist are the only people who know, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get what I need in terms of support or help I might need with parts of this. I get why she keeps it very private, but I don’t know if that would work for me.” They might pan because of your illness, because they have one of their own to deal with, and someone else’s feels like too much right now, or because they have someone in their family with mental illness and feel like they can only deal with that one right now. The point is, there are so very many reasons this might be an issue for someone, if it is, so many different things they might think, and none of them may be about being disgusted or frightened by you.

It’s tough, I know, to walk into parts of life feeling like a person who is “more work” than other people without illness might be or might seem to be. Let’s be real: It does suck, especially since you probably know (I hope you know) that any relationship with anyone can be challenging, or “more work,” or that something with anyone could seem to be light fare and wind up not being that at all. There’s really no denying that that feeling or perception stinks.

At the same time, someone might take a pass on pursuing a relationship with us for any number of reasons; this is just one. And if you do try to pursue something with this guy and it doesn’t progress or wind up happening after all, it might be because of your mental illness and his feelings about it, but it might be for any other number of reasons, like him realizing maybe he didn’t have the feelings he thought he did (or you realizing that), you two finding out you’re just a better fit as non-romantic friends, one or both of you discovering you don’t have enough time for a dating relationships, radically different politics or ideas about relationships, or one of you finding out that the other absolutely cannot stand your very favorite thing in the world.

By all means, I think taking the time to assess all of this as best you can first is a good move on your part, and I certainly do think it’s a big thing to think about and carefully consider, and not just for the other person’s sake, but for your own. You also need to take care of you. But it also isn’t all of who you are, nor is it the only potential thing that could cause a relationship conflict or someone to take a pass. So in the case that this is something you really want to pursue, your therapist is on board too, and you feel up to dating, period (again, mental illness or no), and with this particular person, I don’t see any reason not to pursue it.

I wish you the very best, and will leave you with some extra links that might help you out:

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/06/28/can-i-start-dating-when-i-have-a-mental-illness/feed/0Get Real! What to Do When Sex Has Only Either Felt Painful or Like Nothing?http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/05/10/get-real-what-to-do-when-sex-has-only-either-felt-painful-or-like-nothing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=get-real-what-to-do-when-sex-has-only-either-felt-painful-or-like-nothing
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/05/10/get-real-what-to-do-when-sex-has-only-either-felt-painful-or-like-nothing/#commentsFri, 10 May 2013 21:17:24 +0000http://rhrealitycheck.org/?p=17040

It either hurts or feels like nothing. You don't know what to do, or what's wrong, and your partner is handling it really poorly. Here's some information and advice to the rescue.

I seem to not be able to feel any sort of pleasure from anything sexual. I’m 17 and have never been able to achieve an orgasm. It hurts being fingered. I’ve never been able to masturbate, because I could not keep focus or it started hurting. It also feels too awkward. When my boyfriend tried doing it, it hurt. He tried giving me oral sex, but that was painful. I tell him it hurts, and he tries to go as gently as he can, but it still hurts. I’m frustrated because I get no satisfaction, and my boyfriend’s self esteem is damaged because he thinks it’s his fault. We lost our virginities to each other a couple of months ago. It hurt a lot the first two times. After it stopped hurting, it just felt like nothing. I didn’t have the heart to tell my boyfriend until recently that I don’t feel anything. Now he’s really upset because he feels like a pig and that he used me. He says I subconsciously don’t love him, and that’s why I don’t feel anything.

It seems like I’m the only one with the problem of not being able to feel anything during sex AND clitoral stimulation hurts.

My boyfriend was hesitant to try to please me in the first place because he’s inexperienced and gets frustrated. He gets upset he can’t reciprocate. I don’t expect him to just know what I like. I should be comfortable enough with my body to be able to show him what to do, but if nothing feels good, I have nothing to show him. It is extremely frustrating, because I do get turned on and wet, but end up disappointed, dissatisfied, and annoyed.

Is this more likely to be a psychological or physical issue? I am a little insecure. I also suspect a reason might have been because we had unprotected sex and I might have been nervous, or the fact that we might have gotten caught so I was distracted. Our relationship is in no way sex-centered, but I would be lying if I said it didn’t effect us. We love each other a lot, and my boyfriend would like to be able to give me the sensations that I am able to give him.

Heather Corinna replies:

I want to start with the idea that you are the only one who is having the troubles you’re having. You’re not.

We often hear from folks so sure they are 100 percent alone and unique in whatever is going on with them, though almost always, we’ve not only heard from someone before with the same or similar issues, but from plenty of someones. It’s so easy for people to think their sexual issues are unique because most have so little candid and truly diverse talk about sexuality in their lives, but those of us who work in sexuality know the truly unique sexual issue, which only one person has, is basically a unicorn. It can help to remember that there are billions of people in the world, and there’s probably not any human experience or state totally unique to any of us, including with sex. To give you an example, here are a few other folks’ questions posted recently at our website alone (some similarly convinced it’s only them):

evilekat asks:

I don’t get pleasure out of sex (oral or vaginal). It just doesn’t feel good at all, sometimes it’s just downright uncomfortable. Even when I am aroused, I get no pleasure whatsoever. Masturbating does nothing for me either. It sucks because I want to be able to have an orgasm and I want my boyfriend to feel like he is actually good at sex. It makes me feel like a freak, do I have faulty nerves or something? I don’t know anyone with my problem, some don’t like to have sex, some can’t orgasm, but no one has problems with all of the above and gets no pleasure at all out of sexual activity. Is there something wrong with me? Help!

nzchick asks:

My boyfriend and I had anal sex but neither of us felt anything once he penetrated or while he was in. I felt him go in but that was it. I’m a virgin and neither of us has had anal sex before we were both left really confused. This can’t be normal!

Nmik63 asks:

Me and my boyfriend decided to have sex for the first time. But anyway, while he was doing it, I didn’t feel anything, like anything at all. I was aroused and all that good stuff, but I didn’t feel any pleasure… please help!

SweetAddiction asks:

When I finger myself its real tight but I either feel nothing or pain? Does that mean I’m putting my finger in the wrong spot?

See? It’s so not just you.

Not feeling anything at all, or feeling very little, with any kind of genital sex where the most sensory parts of the genitals are being stimulated is typically an indication someone is just not very aroused or as aroused as they need to be. We don’t all need to be turned on to the same degree to have various kinds of sex feel pleasurable, but sometimes or for some people more than others, being as amped up as possible is key. And whenever we are highly aroused, every kind of sex, including touch with parts besides our genitals, is always going to feel more intense.

Our genitals are incredibly sensitive, but how sensitive they are has a lot to do with if we’re very sexually excited or not, which is why when we, say, wipe after toileting, wash ourselves in the bath, or have a pelvic exam, we’re not usually in wild throes of ecstasy. Most of arousal, pleasure, and sexual response are about our brains and central nervous systems. If there’s not a whole lot of the good stuff going on upstairs and throughout those systems, there’s not going to be a lot going on below. When we are aroused, our whole bodies, including our genitals, get way more sensitive and responsive than when we’re not, so when we’re not feeling anything at all with genital touch, it really is very unlikely we are earnestly and strongly aroused. Also, when we’re sexually excited and really feeling good emotionally—rather than anxious, fearful, insecure, or frustrated—because of how our brain affects our biochemistry, things that might normally hurt more hurt less, and we’re more likely to feel pleasure, when otherwise we may feel pain.

In terms of your genitals specifically, a bunch of different things happen, beyond just self-lubrication (which can also happen as part of your fertility cycle): The cervix and uterus pull backwards, the back of the vagina tents and becomes more spacious, the walls of the vagina fill with blood, and the vulva looks different, with a puffier mons and outer and inner labia and a deeper color. And like the penis, the clitoris becomes erect, and not just the glans and hood you can see on the outside, but the internal portions as well, which make the front of the vagina feel more compact, full, and a lot more sensitive inside (inside the first third, anyway—the back portion only gets so sensitive). And those are just the parts about your genitals; there’s a whole lot of other stuff that often happens with your whole body and in your mind when you’re really turned on, like a faster heart rate and breathing, skin flushing, and pupil dilation. Also our intellectual and emotional sexual feelings can be headier, floatier, more spinny, loud and free-flowing, and sometimes even scary, depending on how comfortable we are with those feelings and who we’re having them with.

Being fully aroused takes a bit of an odd combo of being both keyed up but also relaxed, in our bodies and our minds, of being very in the moment and focused on the experience we’re having, but not too focused on any one part or on a given goal or outcome. If you’ve ever made Hollandaise sauce, it’s a lot like that; it seems like only a few simple ingredients that should be so easy to mix and make delicious, but it’s a very delicate balance that can turn on you so easily, leaving you with a weird half-coagulated mess instead of a delicious thick sauce if just one little thing goes amiss.

One tricky thing that often comes up with younger people, and more commonly with women, is a clear difficulty in correctly identifying what it really is to be and feel fully aroused. (And here’s a hint: the level to which we can become aroused is often lower in our teens and 20s, particularly for women, than it will be later for physiological, chemical, intellectual, interpersonal, and identity-based reasons.) It’s not just about loving someone, for instance. Sometimes that has absolutely nothing to do with love at all. There are a lot of messages in the world that say if women just love someone enough, the sex will be good and the chemistry will be there, even though things don’t play out that way much of the time. It’s not just about thinking a partner looks hot, or about a partner, period. How we feel about ourselves has as much to do with how aroused we are as how we feel about our partners. It’s also not just about someone doing the “right” things in how they touch us. How we feel before we’re even touched at all is usually a huge deal. What’s going on emotionally between us also plays a big part, so a skillful set of fingers can easily be of no use when they’re attached to someone with a crummy attitude.

There’s a lot to feeling fully, over-the-top aroused, from our own lifelong and present sense of self, body, and sexuality to being really excited by and comfortable with our sexual partners, to how we feel and what state our bodies are in at any given time. (Did we sleep well? Are we stressed out about school? Are we hungry? Having relationship problems? Do we have a bunch of zits making us feel not at all sexy?) I don’t mean to second-guess you when you say you are really turned on, but some of what you’re reporting here not only suggests you’re probably not, but that it’d be awfully hard to be.

You identify some things I suspect have inhibited you from getting as turned on as you probably can: discomfort with masturbation (which often is about discomfort with your own body or sexual shame), a partner who becomes easily frustrated, not protecting yourself from big risks, fear of being caught having sex, some insecurity of your own, and coming to any of this likely expecting to be frustrated, dissatisfied, and annoyed and also expecting your partner to be, since that’s what keeps happening. There are also some common threads in your question and some of the other similar questions, like having sexual motives about making an insecure partner feel validated, being new to partnered sex, and putting a lot on genital sex (rather than other whole-body or other-body-part sexual activities). Just one of those things could be a big inhibitor of arousal and sexual response, but all of them are a serious whammy. I’d be so surprised if you were feeling pleasure and were earnestly very turned on that I’d probably call the press.

But what we or our partners are doing in terms of touch does also matter. Not everyone likes the same sexual things, experiences pleasure (or pain) from the same things, or likes a given thing done a given way. Like anything else, sex is something we learn over time and get better at with practice—way more than a few weeks or months of it. We’re always learning anew with every new partner, and throughout our whole lives, we continue learning about our own sexuality and sexual response, not only because there’s a lot to learn, but because it doesn’t tend to stay exactly the same from day to day, year to year, or decade to decade. When you or any partners are new to sex, you’ve all got to be able to feel pretty OK with being a beginner and embrace that, rather than get pissed off about it. Everyone involved needs to be pretty creative and open to experimentation, as well as open and comfortable with the fact that some things will be easier than others, and some things will involve way more experimentation than others. If you have a partner who is profoundly uncomfortable with being new to sex and experimenting, and who also is clearly very product-oriented or goal-oriented, reticent to experiment because they want certain results or have a desperate need to be validated, rather than just wanting to engage in the process no matter what comes out of it, that’s going to be a huge barrier to having enjoyable sex with that partner.

The pain you’re having, and which it seems you have had in the past with masturbation before this, is something I would be sure to see a sexual health-care provider about. Sure, it could be psychological, in whole or in part. Since you mostly seem to be talking about clitoral pain, it could be about the way you’re touching yourself or the way someone else is touching you—that touch may be too rough, intense, or fast. There are more sensory nerve endings packed into that relatively small clitoral glans than any part of any gender‘s body, so a lot of folks find that less is more with that body part. You may need to experiment more on your own and with partners, trying things like more indirect stimulation (like rubbing through the outer labia or mons, or only rubbing lightly over the hood), and/or making sure that when you experiment, it’s because you have strong sexual desires, rather than doing it to appease a partner or to try and make something happen for you just because you think it’s supposed to. Alternately, you may want to check in about those feelings of awkwardness and lack of focus you’re having and see if maybe you’re just not feeling that sexual right now in your life, and if not, just let it go for now. No one has to masturbate or have sex. There can be times in our lives and sexual development when we don’t because it just doesn’t feel right.

However, that pain could also be about, or made more severe by, a health issue, and if it is, all of this stuff about arousal may not be very relevant. Conditions like vulvar vestibulitis, lichen sclerosis, an accumulation of sebum under the clitoral hood (clitoral adhesions), a compressed nerve or a Bartholin’s gland cyst can cause pain like you’re experiencing. Issues like those will require treatment for pain to stop or decrease. Even things that seem like they could be minor or which you may not even think to look into, like a borderline urinary tract infection (UTI) or yeast infection or a sensitivity to certain detergents, a partner’s toothpaste, or menstrual products can be culprits or contributors. So, I’d suggest you make an appointment with a gynecologist to see if anything is up before you have any kind of genital sex again. In the future, if you’re having pain anywhere in your body that clearly isn’t temporary, you always want to ask a health-care provider about it when you can rather than suffering without looking into why.

I’m hearing some clear statements that sound like it is simply not at all the right time for you and your boyfriend to be sexual together. You voice that both of you are having issues with insecurity. You voice that he seems to have an inability to separate love from sex, and is not understanding that how much someone loves someone else is not necessarily going to have anything to do with their sexual response. You could not love someone at all and still have the time of your sexual life with them, after all—this isn’t likely about love. Unless the two of you are trying to create a pregnancy, you are voicing that one or both of you isn’t ready to consistently reduce risks with the sex you’re having, or that you don’t have the assertiveness, support, or the comfort in your relationship needed to protect yourself from outcomes you don’t want and which I suspect he isn’t even remotely ready to handle well.

I’m a bothered by his saying to you that he he feels like a “pig” who “used you” in this context, because it kind of suggests that it’s your fault, and that if your body would just react the way he wants it to, he’d feel differently. That really isn’t cool. You only have so much control over your body, and a statement like that implies, to me, that he has his own sexual issues to work out that no kind of sex with you will magically fix.

Now, maybe he needs to work on his social and communication skills some to figure out how to voice things like that in a way that isn’t so crappy and accusatory. For instance, he could have said, “I’m worried that if I’m feeling pleasure and you’re not, I’m taking advantage or not being a good partner to you. Do you think that?” At the same time, a statement like he made seems to go with things like refusing to believe that you love him because you’re not digging the sex yet, that he knows your own heart and mind better than you do in that respect, and suggesting you’re making him feel like a pig because he’s feeling pleasure and you’re not yet. And all of that combined sets off my radar.

Self-esteem, to be clear, is about our value of our whole selves—not just who we are in a relationship, who we are as a romantic or sexual partner to anyone, or who we are in bed. I sincerely doubt that you not feeling something physically or not responding to sex like it was the best sex ever damaged your boyfriend’s self-esteem. If he feels it took a major hit because you aren’t feeling a given thing physically, that suggests his esteem was either incredibly low to begin with and that he is putting too much of it put into sex or romance, or that he’s, well, being a drama queen. Something a lot of people don’t account for with sex is how it really can dredge up some challenging, tricky emotional stuff we either may not have seen in ourselves before, or may not have felt as acutely. We’re not always ready for that or up to dealing with it at given times in our lives or relationships. Something a lot of people don’t consider in choosing who to be sexual with is where that person’s emotional maturity really is. Someone as insecure as he sounds like probably needs to do some growing before he can handle being a sexual partner.

It’s going to be awfully hard to get very sexually excited and stay very excited with some of the dynamics going on here. When we aren’t feeling what we’d like to in our bodies, or they aren’t reacting the way we think they should, that’s both frustrating and kind of scary. Good partners are able to comfort us at those times, rather than making it about them. I’m concerned about the dynamics you’re describing not just because it seems unlikely either of you are going to have enjoyable sexual experiences with them afoot, but because I suspect they’re going to leave one or both of you feeling bad or crappy, and emotionally and interpersonally precarious. If these kinds of dynamics are happening outside sex, I’m concerned this relationship may not even be all that healthy, but that’s not something I can assess without more information about the whole relationship. It’s certainly something you can look into, though, and you may find this link and this one helpful for doing that.

The best advice I have based on what you told me is to step back from sex in this relationship for now—not just intercourse, but all genital sex. Just put it on the back burner for at least a little while. Just because we have sex once, or twice, or however many times, we don’t have to keep on having it, and it isn’t always wise to. We’re always evaluating whether or not it’s the right thing for us at a given time and in a given context, not just for first times, but every time, because it won’t always be the right thing and we won’t always have all of what we want and need for it to be right for us.

I’d say some things that are going on here give clear cues that sex between you two right now isn’t a great idea. I think both of you have some things to do on your own first before you can potentially get to a place where it might be a lot more sound and feel better, physically and emotionally, for both of you. Personally, I have a strong feeling that a sexual relationship just isn’t what either of you are really ready for with each other, and maybe with other partners too. But that’s ultimately something you’ll need to figure out for yourself to reach your own conclusions.

I think you should start with that sexual health exam, to either rule out that they’re about a physical issue or find out that they are, and get some treatment so you stop hurting so much with genital contact, alone and with partners. You can spend some more time with your own masturbation, and some more time exploring what feels good and doesn’t, and what feels like something at all and what doesn’t, and what really turns you on in your head and heart, not just your body. I think you should also assess this relationship on the whole. Someone you love who refuses to believe you love them, who is deeply insecure and impatient, who is passive-aggressive in his communication just might not be a good person to be close to, period—not just sexually.

I think he should educate himself more about sex, your anatomy and what reciprocity is really about (and I’ll leave some links on that at the bottom of this page, which I think can benefit you too). He can assess the reality of where his esteem is, as well as if he’s earnestly confident and secure enough in himself to be sexual and intimate with you or any other partner at this point in his life. He can check in with himself very honestly about why he so badly needs your body to do certain things, and if he feels like he can’t do any of that, he can at least acknowledge his own big barriers to a working sexual partnership right now and give himself more time, by himself, to grow as a person first. He can read up on and work toward better communication, especially in situations like sex where the emotional stakes are high.

I also think it would be a great idea for both of you to do a sexual inventory worksheet like this, answering very honestly, then sharing each of your answers together. Same goes with our sexual readiness checklist. Then you two can circle back to each other and start by communicating what you’ve figured out about yourselves and where you’re really at, or stay in communication while you do that, hopefully communicating in ways that are patient and productive.

Maybe one or both of you will just realize you moved faster into sex than was sound. That’s OK. All you’ve got to do is step it back and go a lot slower. If you both find that instead, after spending some time with those things above alone and talking about them together, you do feel ready, able, and wanting to be in sexual relationship to each other, and want to work on being a better sexual fit, I think it’d be helpful to start at the beginning again. Stick with things like kissing, cuddling, making out, just being naked together, shared massage (petting) and talking more deeply about your sexual wants, needs, and feelings, putting genital sex aside for a good while or limiting it to mutual masturbation where you’re being sexual together, but only touching your own genitals. If and when you both get to a place where all of those things feel better, physically and emotionally, alone and together, then you can probably move forward and have this all go very differently than it has.

If it turns out one or both of you comes to the conclusion that you are really not ready for this yet, I want you to be able to accept and honor that without feeling crummy about it, or thinking that it means something that it doesn’t, about either of you or your relationship. You are still very young. I know some people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s who feel like they’re just finally starting to come into their own sexually, and it’s quite common for young women to have troubles with reaching orgasm, especially with partners, having satisfying sex lives with partners, and really feeling in touch with their own sexuality. We don’t all have the same pace, the same opportunities, the same kinds of interpersonal relationships, or the same relationships with ourselves and our sexuality. There is no one right age or right pace, just what is right for each of us as individuals, which won’t be in sync all the time with every other person we can be involved with sexually or otherwise. We’re just not all sexually compatible and in the same space, at the same pace, at the same time for sex to be sound. I know very well how much of a bummer that can be when it happens, but it happens and it’s going to happen in life at one time or another, probably to everyone.

I’m going to leave you with a batch of links to look at and to share. I think the pieces on communication and reciprocity could be of particular benefit when you talk together. Whatever your outcome with this, I hope you’re both feeling a whole lot better soon, better able to identify what you each need, together and for yourselves, and can feel more comfortable in accepting, exploring, and honoring whatever that is.

With the popular TV show What Not to Wear coming to an end, maybe we can finally stop tricking ourselves into believing that making a woman look beautiful is just as good as making her feel intelligent or important.

Hannah Weintraub is a 17-year-old high school student and one of RH Reality Check‘s youth voices.

“Step into the 360-degree mirror.”

Those dreaded words have been said to hundreds of “fashion nightmares” on TLC’s hit show What Not to Wear. “Did you want to look like a space hooker?” Clinton Kelly, one of the show’s hosts, said on one episode, berating a single, working mom who confidently said she thinks she looks sexy in whatever she wears. When another woman stepped out in a clown-like costume, explaining that her outfit makes other people smile, the show’s other host, Stacy London, simply rolled her eyes.

What has made this critical twosome so eager to give women makeovers? They believe clothes are the key to confidence.

“Everything needs to be sort of polished and fit you very well,” Kelly explained to one of the show’s alleged fashion disasters, suggesting that these are the key ingredients to finding a job. But what about her intelligence? Her determination? Her expertise? While qualifications are obviously necessary to scoring the job, a baggy shirt, Kelly seemed to say, can overshadow even the brightest applicant.

Kelly and London are not alone in overemphasizing the role feeling good about one’s looks should play in a woman’s self-confidence. Seventeen magazine once advised its readers to look in the mirror and fall in love with one piece of their body every day. My friend read this suggestion and guffawed. Was she supposed to adore her shins? That patch of skin on her elbow? Most importantly, why did she have to “fall in love” with every part of her body? She’s a confident young woman who does not want her physical appearance to define how she feels about herself.

Of course, “body love” movements are better than one possible alternative: self-hatred. In an environment where even “faultless,” airbrushed celebrity photos are criticized, it sometimes seems like having a perfect or even acceptable body is impossible. This feeling of never being good enough is amplified by all the negative advertising telling women and girls to be thin, have flawless skin, or wear cool clothes. These messages needs to be challenged in some capacity, and “body love” campaigns have been that countering force. They seem especially poignant when even airbrushed celebrity photos are picked apart, suggesting that achieving perfection is impossible.

But responding to a focus on beauty with a different focus on beauty misses a big point: Women don’t need to be beautiful to have confidence. Personally I would rather be smart, caring, determined, or creative than simply “pretty.” I don’t need to “love my body,” but I do need to love my personality, my values, and my moral code. Being beautiful is OK, but it won’t get me where I want to go.

This relative apathy toward my appearance seems to be an abnormality in itself. No, I don’t hate how I look. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. But some campaigns, like this one from Seventeen, do not allow disinterest to be an option. Such campaigns exist to help me regain a body confidence I never lost.

Besides, if the magazines and companies supporting many of these campaigns were really so invested in raising confidence—and not just marketing products to young women who are trying to find peace with their bodies—then where are the ads and pro bono campaigns encouraging women and girls to be more confident in areas besides physical appearance? How about, for example, encouraging young women to go into science? With an overwhelming majority of male leadership in science and engineering, this field could use some positive role modeling. But, to use one well-known example, the only thing Dove’s “real beauty” campaign wants to boost is your skin.

I am tired of young women’s physical appearances coming under such scrutiny while many guys can sidestep the whole issue of whether or not they “love their bodies.” Men don’t have to attach their bodies to their self-worth in the same way that women are expected to. Sure, men have pressure to look a certain way, but the stakes for not meeting this expectation seem much lower than they are for women. This difference becomes apparent in gendered reactions to weight: Many people call tummy rolls or love handles “pudge” or “fat” on a woman. Men with larger body sizes are often just “hefty” or “better for cuddling with.”

The sad truth behind What Not to Wear is that many of the women Kelly and London pull off the streets don’t care about the clothes they wear, and they feel just fine. They’re too worried about their families or their careers to think about something as trivial as finding a perfect A-line skirt. Ironically, these women are condemned for their lack of style rather than commended for their accomplishments and admirable ability to transcend societal expectations of how a woman should present herself. With What Not to Wearcoming to an end after a long run that started in 2003, maybe we can finally stop tricking ourselves into believing that making a woman look beautiful is just as good as making her feel intelligent or important.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/03/28/makeover-culture-isnt-a-magic-road-to-self-esteem-2/feed/0Keep It Real Campaign Asks Fashion Magazines to Ditch Photoshop (At Least Once a Month)http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/06/27/keep-it-real-campaign-asks-fashion-magazines-to-ditch-photoshop-at-least-once-mon/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=keep-it-real-campaign-asks-fashion-magazines-to-ditch-photoshop-at-least-once-mon
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/06/27/keep-it-real-campaign-asks-fashion-magazines-to-ditch-photoshop-at-least-once-mon/#commentsWed, 27 Jun 2012 21:56:42 +0000When it comes to body image issues the odds are stacked against girls. Three out of four teenage girls feel depressed, guilty, and shameful after spending just three minutes leafing through a fashion magazine. The Keep It Real Campaign wants to change this by making one simple ask of fashion magazines: print at least one picture of a model that is not retouched in photoshop in each issue.

]]>Last weekend I learned that the only thing worse than shopping for a bathing suit is doing so with two small children who would rather be anywhere else. Like most American women, I have issues with my body. I wish I were taller and thinner—my theory, by the way, has always been that if I were taller I would be naturally thinner because on a not-quite-5’3” frame there’s just nowhere to hide an extra five pounds. I’ve never had a flat stomach (except for a brief moment in high school after a bad bout of mononucleosis) and have always looked for bathing suits that would hold in my midsection. I’ve always had large breasts that need built in support so as not to look droopy or worse spill out all over the place when I dive in. Post-children and nearing 40, I have also added cellulite on my legs and what I believe people refer to as a “muffin top” to the list of things my bathing suits must camouflage

As always I approached bathing suit shopping with a sense of despair and at least a little self-loathing (why had I let my weight loss efforts stall last month, I’d been on such a roll). But I’d promised my older daughter a trip to the freshly opened pool and I needed something to wear. I attempted to keep my body image issues to myself as I rejected suit after suit but given my level of disappointment, I doubt I succeeded. Three stores, two cranky kids, and an hour or so later I found a suit that worked just fine. It didn’t make me feel like a super model but it was cute enough.

So we moved on to finding a bathing suit for my older daughter and I was struck by what a totally different experience it was for her. We simply walked into Old Navy, found a few in shapes and patterns that looked cute, presented our 20 percent off coupon at the desk, and walked out. Okay, there was a briefly heated discussion about why at six, she could not get the bikini with the triangle top (that seemed to be screaming, look here’s where my breast should be even though I’m at least five years from puberty) but there was no trip to the fitting room, no self-esteem squashing images in the three-way mirror, and no discussion about what she wished were different about her shape or size.

The pessimist in me wondered when this would change because we all know that when it comes to body image and self esteem, the odds are stacked against all of our daughters.

My older daughter may be spared for at least a few more years because put simply she has the exact body shape for which designers seem to make clothes. Granted she’s a head shorter than most of her friends but her pre-puberty body is tiny, thin, toned, and perfectly proportioned. My younger daughter is shaped more like I was as a kid– all sway-back and belly. She is both taller and heavier than 98 percent of the kids her age but she is not yet two and may change shape entirely within the next year or so. I admit I worry that if she does not her bathing suit shopping experiences may resemble mine more than her sister’s.

I remember being in the dressing room at the Children’s Place when I was about six or seven trying on a one piece bathing suit. It had a great metallic sheen, pastel pink and green stripes that ran diagonally across my body, crisscrossed straps in the back, and an Izod crocodile on the left side. As I twirled around thinking I looked grea,t the saleswoman turned to my mom and said: “Well, she does have a tummy doesn’t she.” Though she quickly added how cute it was, I knew this was not a compliment and never quite felt the same about that bathing suit or my tummy.

Turns out that I am not the only kid to have body images issues while still in elementary school. According to statistics culled by the Keep It Real Campaign, 42 percent of first through third graders want to be thinner and 81 percent of ten-year-olds want to lose weight. The stats just get worse as girls grow up; 53 percent of 13-year-olds are unhappy with their bodies and by 17 that number has grown to 78 percent.

One obvious source of this discontent is popular culture including movies, television, and magazines that present an unattainable idea of what young women “should” look like. Today’s models do not look like the rest of us. While twenty years ago the average fashioned model weighed 8 percent less than the average woman, today she weighs 23 percent less. If that weren’t bad enough, once they get into print, today’s models don’t even look like themselves. Most pictures we see in magazine are digitally retouched to make the model look even thinner or lengthen her torso or smooth out her knees and armpits. This could explain why 48 percent of teenage girls wish they were as skinny as models and three out of four teenage girls feel depressed, guilty, and shameful after spending just three minutes leafing through a fashion magazine.

The Keep It Real Campaign wants to change this by making one seemingly simple ask of fashion magazine editors: print at least one picture of a model that is not retouched in photoshop in each issue.

The idea for this stemmed from a May petition on Change.org created by 14-year-old Julia Bluhm. Bluhm is a member of SPARK (Sexualization Protest, Action, Resistance, Knowledge), a group of young (ages 13 to 22) feminists started by college professors in 2010. The group undertakes two actions per month such as demonstrations or petitions designed “to reject the commodified, sexualized images of girls in media and support the development of girls’ healthy sexuality and self-esteem.” Recent actions have included petitioning against Lego’s new line for girls (which had them build hair salons and cupcake stores instead of robots and spaceships) and a Halloween costume called Anna Rexia.

Bluhm’s petition explained that: “To girls today, the word ‘pretty’ means skinny and blemish-free.” It went on to say: “Here’s what lots of girls don’t know. Those ‘pretty women’ that we see in magazines are fake.” It asked the editors of Seventeen for untouched photographs. Over 83,000 people have signed the petition as of now and it led to a meeting with the editors. Though the SPARK activists believed the meeting went well, the magazine’s staff made no promises and nothing has changed.

Hence the three-day Keep It Real Campaign which is targeting the editors of numerous magazines read by young girls including Cosmopolitan, Lucky, Teen Vogue, and Marie Claire. The social media campaign first asks people to join a Facebook Event page that says:

“I’m taking the Keep It Real Challenge. It’s time for the media to drop Photoshop and show real beauty.”

On the first day of the campaign (today, June 27th), participants are asked to reach out to magazine editors via tweets with messages like:

“Hey @seventeenmag will you pledge to #KeepItReal and print one unphotoshopped pic of a model per issue?”

Day two of the campaign is all about blogging (sorry if I’m jumping the gun with this article but I wanted to get the word out) and participants are asked to write about how photoshopped beauty has impacted them or someone they loved. The organizers explain: “Use your voice and write down why you want the industry to “keep it real” in magazines.” Participants can post their stories to their own blog or the Facebook Event wall and are urged to tweet their stories out to magazine editors as well.

The final day of the challenge is dedicated to documenting real beauty. Participants are asked to take photos that:

“Capture the essence of what beauty means to each of us. This can be a self-portrait, a portrait of your friends or whatever else you’re inspired to share.”

They can then share these on Instagram, Facebook, or twitter. The event organizers are partnering with Endangered Bodies to display the best photos of the day on a billboard in New York City. (The Instagram hash tag for these pictures is #KeepItRealChallenge.)

The challenge is being sponsored by Spark, Miss Representation, LoveSocial, I Am That Girl, and Endangered Bodies, and the organizers have created a great online toolkit that provides you with everything you need to participate.

Maybe, if we get magazines to stop relying so heavily on photoshop and presenting such truly unattainable images of women, my daughters have a fighting chance of growing up without a list of flaws that their future bathing suits must cover. Maybe the only obstacle they will face when they shop for summer suits will be their mother’s objections to bikinis.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/06/27/keep-it-real-campaign-asks-fashion-magazines-to-ditch-photoshop-at-least-once-mon/feed/0When It Comes to Eating Disorders, Do We as a Society Know What We’re Dealing With?http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/03/02/when-it-comes-to-eating-disorders-do-we-as-society-know-what-were-dealing-with/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=when-it-comes-to-eating-disorders-do-we-as-society-know-what-were-dealing-with
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/03/02/when-it-comes-to-eating-disorders-do-we-as-society-know-what-were-dealing-with/#commentsFri, 02 Mar 2012 13:38:48 +0000The point is that the perfection those suffering from eating disorders are longing for in themselves in most cases is neither physical nor real. We will need to overcome our societal inability to see errors for what they are—an opportunity to learn—if we want to deal with eating disorders.

]]>This week it is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. Not that you’d know it. Three days in, Angelina Jolie’s leg at the Oscars on Sunday is still getting a lot more attention than the eating disorder usually associated with unnaturally thin and awkwardly poky limbs.

There’s a reason for that. Eating disorders make for an uncomfortable conversation topic. For one, they are incredibly insidious and prevalent. About 8 million individuals living in the United States have an eating disorder (7 million of them women and girls), and most never get the treatment they need. Essentially, this means everyone knows at least one person with a mental illness. Most people don’t like to think about that.

And then there’s the fact that eating disorders are deadly. Literally. Eating disorders are the mental illness with the highest mortality rate in the United States, and it is estimated that some 20 percent of those suffering from anorexia will die prematurely.

But mostly, many of us don’t like to talk about eating disorders because we’ve been very close to a sufferer.

In my case, me.

When I was 16, I arrived in the United States as a foreign exchange student from Denmark with a complicated, but manageable, case of bulimia, weighing approximately 110 pounds. I went home a year later with full-blown anorexia, weighing about 80 (which, considering my height, indicates a Body Mass Index of about 9.5, i.e. very underweight). It took fifteen years, 3 bouts of therapy, and a pregnancy to finally root out all obsessive thinking about food.

Now, when I think about food, it’s not obsessive. I may really want a cinnamon roll or crave salt. And I definitely get so hungry that thoughts of food take over until I eat. But I no longer think about the quantities I have eaten, or about whether or not I deserve food.

To say that this is “liberating” is beside the point. On the one hand, it feels like I am finally alive, that I can now concentrate on the real colors and textures of life. On the other, to be honest, it’s so basic that it’s mundane. When I don’t think about my past, I forget I ever obsessed over food. I eat when I am hungry and don’t when I am not. It seems uncomplicated, somehow. Yet, of course, I know it’s not.

There are any number of books and articles linking eating disorders to the depiction of boyishly (and unnaturally) thin women in fashion, movies, and television. In my experience, fashion has very little to do with it. Fashion will make perfectly well-proportioned and healthy women and girls want to lose five pounds, go on fad diets, and be miserable. Fashion dictates clothing that looks better on a stick-insect than on a person.

Fashion alone, however, does not make you live off half an apple a day. Fashion does not make you develop so much scar tissue in your throat that your gag reflex is inhibited and you need to use toothbrushes and pens to make yourself throw up. Fashion may be an impetus to lose weight. But it’s something else that makes you stop eating altogether.

And that something else is control.﻿ At least in my case.

I am not a reductionist, and years of working closely with victims of all kinds has taught me that while we all are experts on our own suffering, we can be woefully blind to the solutions that are necessary to deal with that of others.

Even so, I believe letting go of control is key to recovery for many. When my mother instituted a system of rewards for pounds gained with target body weight on certain dates, I’d carefully gain the required weight on the required date, then proceed to lose it all and more in the days after. In short, I never let go of control.

By contrast, when I returned to therapy briefly while dealing with a bout of bulimia during a particularly stressful time in my life, my therapist told me not to worry about it. “In the grand scheme of things,” he said, “you are just sticking a finger down your throat. Really, is that so bad? Just remember to brush your teeth.” My purging immediately got less frequent and then disappeared—it didn’t feel so imperative after I stopped worrying about it. In short, I gave myself license to let go.

The point is not that a cavalier attitude always generates the desired change. In this case, my therapist knew from previous interactions who I was and what my reaction was likely to be.

The point is that the perfection those suffering from eating disorders are longing for in themselves in most cases is neither physical nor real. It’s not that I wanted to be thin, or even that I liked my emaciated body. It’s that I was scared out of my wits of failing.

We will need to overcome our societal inability to see errors for what they are—an opportunity to learn—if we want to deal with eating disorders. So if you want to do something to counter eating disorders this week, sure, eat healthily and don’t assume that anyone who’s not a size 2 is unhealthy, stupid, or both.

But more than that: show through your actions that you appreciate effort and honest errors more than caution and control. It may seem three steps removed from eating disorders and food. Trust me, it is not.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/03/02/when-it-comes-to-eating-disorders-do-we-as-society-know-what-were-dealing-with/feed/1Get Real! I Gave Him My Virginity, But Don’t Feel Like I Got Anything Backhttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/11/22/i-gave-him-my-virginity-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-got-anything-back/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=i-gave-him-my-virginity-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-got-anything-back
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/11/22/i-gave-him-my-virginity-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-got-anything-back/#commentsTue, 22 Nov 2011 08:27:10 +0000What to do when what's supposed to feel like a sexual milestone feels more like a raw deal, including sorting through feelings of upset about a partner's sexual history.

I’ve been dating my boyfriend for 6 months now. He is my first long-term boyfriend and I really do love him. He is 3 years older than me and has had a 3 year relationship with another girl before me. After 3 months we decided to have sex. I was a virgin and this was a really big deal to me but he was not a virgin and had been with 2 girls before me. I don’t regret being with him, I knew I was ready. But I get really upset about him not losing his virginity to me. Is it normal to be so upset about his past and past relationships? I have tried to just forget it all but I almost feel cheated. I gave my virginity to him and I didn’t get anything in return. I felt like it wasn’t as special to him as it was to me. How can I get over this?

Heather Corinna replies:

Feeling like you didn’t “get anything in return” sounds very troubling to me. That strikes me as a huge deal, and like something that’s probably bigger and about more than sex being a first-time for you and not for him. Someone with partners before you isn’t limited in their ability to do their part to make sex be something where it feels like there is a very mutual benefit because they had other partners.

I want to make sure you know that if you made what you feel is a wrong choice for you in this, that’s okay. Our lives are an ongoing learning process, and we are not always going to make our best choices. Often enough, we won’t know or realize what our poor choices were and what the better ones could have been until we’ve already made them. It’s not the most awesome-feeling part of life, for sure, but it’s human, okay and is a big part of how we grow and keep figuring out what we really want and need. Plus, we really can do most things again in ways better for us when we want to try again. This setup some people create where first-time-ever sex is either perfect or awful, and nothing in between, doesn’t really support that process. I’ll explain more as I go, but I’d suggest you try and let go of that notion if you have it. Every time we have sex can be a first time if we approach it that way, which not only takes a lot of these pressures off, it tends to make for a much better sex life then anyone thinking their firsts are all over, or the most important part of their sex life — a part that’s most typically not the most awesome for anyone — already happened.

If you’re holding on to feelings of being mad at yourself about this choice, try and let that go. Beating up on ourselves rarely gets us to the good stuff. How about you instead focus on taking the valuable things you can from all of this and using them like we tend to use things we learn from a first try: to move forward so that our next try goes a bit more like we’d like it to than the first did?

What first-time sex (whether that’s intercourse or something else) means to any given person varies. What any given sexual experience someone can have can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, including first-time experiences. Even if you’d engaged in sex for the very first time with someone else whose very first time it was, too, that doesn’t mean it would have meant the same things to both of you, like that you’d have felt it was as special to the other person as it was to you. It also doesn’t mean you’d have found in it what it was you were looking for.

I don’t know what first-time sex has meant for you before, during or what it now means after-the-fact. Like I said, people differ with this. I also don’t know what you, as an individual, have wanted or want now when it comes to your sexual or romantic partners. For some people, having a sexual partner with their same level of experience, be that general life experience or specifically sexual or romantic experience, is important. For other people, it’s isn’t, isn’t so much, or isn’t in the same ways. And of course, how important some of these things are can change for people through different phases of life, different relationships, or based on what they find out from their life, sexual or romantic experiences.

You get to feel however you feel about this. If what you really wanted was a sexual partner whose first time it also was, you get to have wanted that. You even get to still want that. But that’s not the person you chose to be with for this experience. You know we can’t unring a bell, whether that’s about choosing to engage in sex with this person or this person’s life having involved other sexual and romantic partners before you. How you feel about these things is in the present, but these events are in the past. They’re done. He had partners before you, and you chose to engage in sex with him, knowing that. I can get you might feel bummed about that, but I don’t think it has to be a big bummer, really, especially since that issue alone probably isn’t really what’s at the core of how you’re feeling, anyway.

You feel pretty bad right now, and about some things now in the past, but probably also about a relationship or parts of it that are still going on or might happen in the future. I’m not sure what you think might have been different if this had been his first time, but I think you can certainly start by thinking about that yourself, because I think that’s a good start to figuring out what you want and need now and moving forward.

I have a couple lists you can make and look at which I think will help get to the bottom of some of this — including if this is bigger than his sexual history, which I suspect it is — may help you move forward from here in a sound way and will hopefully also help you make some peace with your feelings.

First: make a list of what you walked into first-time sex expecting and what you wanted from it. Be as real and as honest as you can. Then cross out the things where you feel like those expectations and wants were met: where it was as you expected and you did get what you wanted from it. After that, set that list aside for a bit.

Next: make a list of what didn’t happen with first-time sex you are NOW so strongly wishing it had been like: things that aren’t on the first list, that you’ve only realized or discovered in hindsight. That may include you wishing you had been this person’s first partner, but don’t stop there. Focus on all the things you can think of that you feel were not right or didn’t feel good (including afterward) about that experience, and put them on this list, even if some of those things seem silly or like they shouldn’t matter.

Now: look at both of those lists. Put an X by things that really, truly ONLY could happen or could have happened if you had been his very first partner.

Chances are, there won’t be much to put an X by. For instance, maybe you wanted this person to put more value on the sex you two were having or better recognize how important this was and is to you. His having had partners before you doesn’t prevent that (nor would you being his first partner mean he’d have done those things), so that’d stay. What about wanting something like someone to ask you more how things felt for you during, or maybe have expressed how he felt about you more demonstrably during or after sex? He can still do those things and could have: his having previous partnerships didn’t stand in the way of any of that, either.

Maybe you wanted him to feel just as vulnerable as you did, a vulnerability you think is about it a first time? Even in that case, I don’t think you can cross that one out, because for all you know he didn’t feel any more vulnerable than when it was his first time and wouldn’t have. Maybe you wanted him to act like he didn’t know what he was dong? Again, I don’t think we can cross that off: a lot of people having a first-time don’t act that way, and just because we’ve slept with other people before also doesn’t mean we know what we’re doing with a new partner, even if we think we do or act like we do.

When you’ve X’d the things it truly is sound to cross off as things that absolutely could not have been or can’t be based only on his past, because his past is not something he can change, take a look at what’s left.

Those are the things where you could potentially have experienced or might still experience something different with this person if he or you changed your behavior — during sex or in general — ideas or attitudes. Or where things could have gone more like you wanted and didn’t, but not because or only because he had sex with others before you.

Those are things you both can probably potentially change if you both want to change them, be that with the way you relate, how you approach and go about sex together, how you think about these things, or even by changing your expectations. Plenty of people’s expectations about sex before they engage in it (and plenty after) are not very realistic, so some of this stuff may just be about acknowledging the things we can’t ask sex itself to provide, like increasing a partner’s value of us, for example. Those are the things that are not about his having previous partners.

Next. Do you want to do what you can to resolve these feelings with this person, and/or keep pursuing a sexual and romantic relationship with them? Then after you think about these things for yourself, it’s time to start talking about them together. In these talks, I’d focus not on what he or you can’t change — like his part or your choice to have sex with him — but what you or he can change. If you wanted those things then and feel bad now, you probably also want them now and in the future, right? The things you have on that list you feel you want and need that he can provide or help with, regardless of his sexual history? Tell him you want and need them. Ask him to talk with you about how he feels he or you might be able to make changes so you can have them.

You also want to make sure that you’re taking stock of what things you wanted and want still that he might not be a big part of. For example, how’s your self-esteem? Do YOU feel special all by yourself, without any status from your relationship, including the status you don’t have, but want of being a first sexual partner? Too, with what you know now, were you really ready? Do you feel ready now, or like maybe you need to take a few steps back and rethink this for yourself? Anything you come to realize is about things you need to do or work on for yourself? Hop on ‘em.

If his having previous partners still feels like a big issue for you and you want to stay in a relationship with this person, it might help to think about romantic or sexual relationships as being similar to friendships or family relationships. People often apply very different standards to them in some respect, but that’s often not sound.

In families with more than one child, can a second or third child never be as special as the first? Whoever your best friend is in life right now: are they less special than your best friends from before? Was your very first best friend any less special because you have this other best friend now? Is this boyfriend less special to you because you had boyfriends before? In all of those cases, the answer is probably no.

We don’t have a tiny handful of love or ourselves that we can spend in one place like that and have it be gone ever after or be less than we had in the first place. Value, love and care for other people are kind of like rechargeable batteries. We can use up a lot of juice with one person at one time, sure, but then we can recharge and have just as much to give someone else. That’s part of why we CAN have more than one friend and have them both be special, and parents can have more than one kid and love one of them just as much as another. I’d suggest you try to let go of ideas about this person or you being more or less special and embrace the fact that BOTH of you can be special, just in different ways and at different times. Even if his very first partner was special to him, that doesn’t mean his very first time with you wasn’t, too. This doesn’t have to be a competition: everyone can win.

That all said, if you strongly feel you would feel better being with someone whose life experience and romantic and sexual history is more like yours, then you get to choose that moving forward. Maybe for you, at this point in your life, having this kind of relationship with someone years older than you and with more life experience isn’t what you want or what feels right for you. It’s okay for people to have those kinds of preferences in ways that are still respectful of others, which is mostly about just owning your preference as yours instead of suggesting it should be everyone’s and recognizing it’s about a preference of yours, not about someone like your boyfriend having less intrinsic value as a person because he had other partners before you.

You know, for as long as this work has been my gig, I have heard a vast array of first-time sex stories and feelings about them afterwards. One of the many things I’ve learned in that listening and talking is that there is NO one right way of engaging in first-time sex — sparing serious basics like everyone really wanting to have that kind of sex, full, mutual consent and people feeling ready — that results in people getting the expected results or what they wanted. For instance, I’ve heard people be disappointed or feel hurt in the ways you’re expressing when both people were both having a first-time. I’ve heard from people able to marry who waited until marriage and were disappointed. I’ve heard from people who didn’t wait and were disappointed. People experience disappointment and regret with first-time sex in every context you can think of, just like other people don’t in every context you can think of.

Disappointment with first-time sexual experiences is tremendously common. Having seen so many people aim to do what their (or someone else’s) idea of the “right way” was who still found it didn’t give them what they were after, my sense is that’s usually less about the context being wrong and more about people’s expectations being problematic. So many people who feel disappointed with first-times seem to often have had the idea that a first time is about things being perfect or one-time-only. I don’t know about you, but for me, that’s an awful lot to ask of a first time for anything.

First-time sex, just like first-time bike riding, first-time public speaking or first-time writing isn’t about getting everything exactly right or about any sort of end. It’s about beginnings, about a start to what will likely be a lifelong process of learning and growing and experiencing things. The first time we try and walk? We usually fall flat on our face or our bum. Our steps are unsteady. Our knees wobble like jello. Then we try again. And again. And we get better and better at it over time, rather than magically being expert at it and feeling expert at it that first time, or framing that first time as an ideal for how to walk. Over time we learn things that help us get better at it, like what we need to be stable in our steps, how we can move from walking to running or jumping, and how to feel more confident in walking. We learn how to walk whatever our own best way is, based on the uniqueness of our bodies and selves. We don’t — and can’t — know any of those things with our very first step. That first step is where we just start learning, not where we stop. The same is true here.

Your first time wasn’t what you wanted it to be. I know how important that can be to people, so I’m so sorry that you feel that way. But one of the very best things about what really makes a first time so cool and potentially important, even when it’s not ideal (and sometimes more because it isn’t!), is that it’s about opening a door to many, many opportunities afterward for next times, many of which will, just by virtue of not being first times, usually go way better. Now you’ve learned a few things, maybe gotten some clues about things you want and need you might not have known or acknowledged before. You had a first time. Going into it, you expected certain things, you wanted certain things, and you felt you did or didn’t need certain things. So, going into a possible next time, and a time after that, and after that, what do you know now? What can you use from what you know now to make choices moving forward, to ask of partners moving forward, and be much more likely to get what you want and need?

Some of what you learned here might mostly be for or about yourself, like maybe part of being ready for you when it comes to sex is being with someone and in a time of your own life or a relationship where you already feel very special and very valued in the greater context of their lives and your own, separate from them. Maybe some of what you learned, and this partner can too — after all, it was his first time with YOU, so he’s at the start of a learning process just like you are — is that there are some things you need for sex to feel good for you neither of you knew you did, like perhaps some more affirmation and loving communication during sex or more affection afterward, like things to make it feel more special for both of you, like having it be more clearly recognized by your partner that sex with a partner is a very big deal to you.

I don’t know anything about this relationship. I know you love this person, but that doesn’t tell me anything about the dynamics or quality of the relationship. So, I also want to make sure you’re thinking about that. Sometimes sex with someone illuminates parts of our relationship: it can do that with the great stuff but also with the stuff that isn’t great. It may be some of the bad feelings you’re having are because the failings with the sex you had are also failings in your relationship as a whole. I want to make sure you don’t have the idea that you have to stay with this person if things really aren’t good, if this relationship isn’t what you really want, or if what went wrong here for you with this sex is what’s been or is becoming wrong for you in the relationship, like not feeling special to this person or like you get as good as you give.

I know sometimes people can feel that if they “gave their virginity” to someone and they don’t stay with that person evermore, they will have really messed up. But since it’s rare for people to stay a lifetime with a first partner, and staying in a relationship that’s not what you want and need and isn’t good for you is bad news for everyone, I disagree. Again, we’re talking about first-times, not last times.

If you feel lousy about sex you had with someone, like feeling that you didn’t get anything close to what they did out of it the first time, chances are good that — unless something changes about that person, how they interact with you and vice-versa, and the way you’re having sex together — it’s probably going to feel that way the next time. And the time after that unless, again, whatever created those feelings can change and does change. So, in working all of this through, be sure you also do some thinking about this relationship as a whole and if it’s right for you. If the things you want and need are things you can both work on and improve, but this guy doesn’t seem to care about them or really want to work on them, the big issue here may not be this guy’s past, but this guy just not being a good fit for you in the present. Same goes for figuring out if, with what you know now, a sexual relationship with this person is right for you. If you feel like it’s not, or you’re really unsure now, you can always take sex off the table. Just because we had any kind of sex with someone once never means we have to keep having sex with them.

This is a heavy stuff, I know, and it can be hard to try and sort it all through when you’re feeling blue. You don’t have to figure all of this out at once: you can’t, anyway. Before you even get started, you may need to take some extra care of yourself, like doing things you know make you feel better when you’re feeling down. Take whatever time you need with this, have as many talks as you need to with this person, friends or family. I don’t think you did anything wrong here in any big way. But I think you can use how you’re feeling and what you know now to inform your choices moving forward so that you’re more likely to have sexual experiences and romantic relationships you feel great about, rather than conflicted with. And that’s going to involve more than loving someone or not, but taking some larger stock of what you really want and need for yourself and in sex with someone else beyond feeling love.

Whatever conclusions you come to, just be and stay real about whatever it is you really want and need right now, using this past experience not as something that makes your present miserable, but as a way to get better at seeking out, asking for and agreeing only to what you feel will make sex or sexual relationships in your present and future be more likely to be as right for you as they can be.

I’m going to leave you with some links I think might help, and you’re also always welcome to come to the message boards if you’d like to talk more about this either one-on-one, or with other users who’ve been where you’re at:

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/11/22/i-gave-him-my-virginity-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-got-anything-back/feed/1I’m 14 and My Boyfriend Wants Sex. Is Now the Right Time?http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/09/30/sure-boyfriend-wants-right-time/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sure-boyfriend-wants-right-time
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/09/30/sure-boyfriend-wants-right-time/#commentsFri, 30 Sep 2011 07:44:34 +0000Do "all guys" really always want more sexually than you really want or feel ready to do yourself? No. But even if they did, that doesn't mean it'll always be right for you -- or them! -- to engage in sex you don't feel ready for yet or don't really want yourself.

Hi I am 14 years old and me and my boyfriend have been dating for 2 months on the 20th… we’re mostly all teenagers here and young adults and can tell that guys want more than just make-outs, hugs and kisses they want sex… I wouldn’t have a problem having sex with him. I am pretty sure he is still a virgin by 99.9% and I am also still a virgin and was wondering when the best time it would be to have sex, where and I am nervous that I will mess up some how…. Help please??

Heather Corinna replies:

Just because someone might want something from someone else doesn’t mean it’s right for that other person, either person, or that the time when they want it is the right time for it to happen.

Few people in their early teens have a lot of what is needed in order to have healthy and satisfying sexual lives with partners, especially when they include kinds of sex that present high risks of sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy or heavy negative social outcomes. Some of not having what’s needed is about not having the same legal rights and resources as older people do. Some of it is about just getting started in discovering your sexuality, and learning how to manage it and how to manage love or sexual relationships. Think of it, perhaps, like learning to drive: you wouldn’t take an 8-wheeler out on the highway before you had a lot of practice with side streets and a car that wasn’t the size of a house first, right?

It tends to take some time and life experience to get a foothold on the communication and assertiveness skills people need to be able to have about sex in order to lead sexual lives that go well for everyone involved. It’s also difficult to have a sexual life that’s healthy and that we really enjoy when we’re very worried about things like “messing up,” too. Part of learning to have sex with a new partner, and learning about sex, period, involves lots of trial and error (which often is more awkward than steamy), some stuff happening we might feel embarrassed by, and doing things that maybe one partner thinks will rock the other’s world, but their partner experiences as merely meh. Part of being ready to be sexual with someone else involves some level of comfort for those kinds of things: feeling okay about them happening, even if we’re not thrilled they’re happening.

Even for much older people who have more life experience and resources, including relationship experience, better access to sexual healthcare, and better cultural support in having sex lives, two months of dating can often be too fast to move into kinds of sex like oral sex or intercourse. Not for everyone, mind you, nor in every relationship or situation, but for plenty of people it is, and not just because of their age. Being ready is about a lot more than how old we are.

I also found this other question you posted:

I am 14 years old and my boyfriend is 15. His and my senior friend is having a Halloween party/bash. Being that he is a senior I am pretty sure there will be alcohol there. I am also pretty sure me and my bf will eventually have some one way or another. Then if we get drunk enough (which will probably happen) we may end up in the bedroom together and I won’t know how to respond to this… I am pretty sure him being a teenage guy he wants to have sex with me. But I don’t know how to react to this. I don’t know if he’ll have a condom because I don’t have birth control but I also am wondering if he is ready himself??? HELP PLEASE??!!!

That post lets me know, and should also let you know, that there are clearly sound reasons to be concerned that this is very much not at all likely to be the right time. Some of the other things the best time for sex requires are the ability for everyone to give real consent — which can’t happen when you’re wasted out of your gourd — nothing that’s optional, like sex or drinking, seeming like it will simply happen, rather than be something you choose, and ideally, it also won’t involve anyone breaking any laws. In both your cases, not only is drinking itself against the law, someone having sex with someone else while drunk also is often criminal (that is a form of sexual assault, one either you or your boyfriend could be held legally responsible for committing), and given your age, you also probably aren’t yet of the age of consent for sex, either. Some areas leave room for same or similar-aged partners, so you may be clear of that one, but not all of them do, meaning your older-than-you boyfriend could wind up in very serious legal hot water. You also express feeling very unprepared to know how to respond to any of this. In a word, it sounds like you’re drowning already.

These two posts together make it sound like the way things stand now, and the way you’re feeling about them, having any kind of sex together would much more likely be something that results in negatives for one or both of you than in positives.

I’m not a person who gets judgy about sexual readiness based only on age: just because someone is 14 doesn’t mean I’m going to assume they’re not ready for something. But I am someone who’s heard about more people’s sexual choices and outcomes than most, and I’ve a very good idea of what “pretty ready for sex” looks like and what “nothing close to ready” looks like. This looks to me like you are nowhere near where you’d need to be to be likely to have most kinds of sex, including intercourse, be a positive for you. Knowing what I know, both from life and my work where I have talked with tens of thousands of young people one-on-one about their sexual choices, you’re looking a lot more like a deer in the headlights to me than like someone who is ready to be in the driver’s seat.

There’s never going to be one “best time” for any kind of sex for anyone, of any age, because these decisions are individual and very situational. In other words, there’s about who we are as individual people and about the specific situations involved, including the with-who, the where, the when and the how, things which differ from sexual scenario to sexual scenario a lot. However, we can make some fair generalizations about what is most likely to be a better time for most people, a time and environment when sex they engage in is most likely to be as safe as it can be in terms of their health, and as positive as it can be for them all around, including enjoying themselves and feeling good in their bodies and their hearts.

For instance, better outcomes from sex usually happen when people hold off on high-risk sex — which intercourse is, especially when people are in a position where they can’t fully consent, like when drunk, pressured or uninformed — until they have what they need to either reduce those risks, or to deal with those outcomes. You say you haven’t even had a talk about condoms or asked about them and don’t use any other kind of birth control: that makes clear one of the most basic things needed for reducing risks isn’t something you’re prepared with yet. Readiness around those things also includes the confidence in ourselves and assertiveness with partners to ask about things like condoms and set limits clearly, rather than putting that the other person and gambling with those risks.

It’s likely to be a better time when you feel okay about the knowledge that sex with a partner, especially when it’s new or they are new to you, is not at all likely to go how it does in the movies; when you feel like it’d be okay to “mess up,” or look the way that you look, or when you know that how people respond to sex can be a big question mark. Ideally, you’d already have some sense of how you both respond from spending much more time taking smaller, more gradual sexual steps first.

Having the help and support we need with our sexual lives is another biggie. When sex is a positive in our lives, one piece of that is often that we don’t have to be sneaking around and can talk to the people who are the biggest part of your lives about our sex lives, even though we might not share every gory detail. We also will either have access to the kinds of things we need to have healthy sexual lives — including sexual healthcare — or access to people who can help us get those things. As a minor, that will usually mean at least one person who is a legal adult and who you really, really trust and know has earned that trust.

It’s a way better time to have sex when it’s not just something a person “wouldn’t have a problem with.” Sex with partners is optional: it’s not anything anyone has to do or is obligated to do. Sex with a partner is supposed to be something that, when we choose to be part of it, we choose because it’s what we really want and feel good about, not just what someone else does, if they even do. Sex between people always goes best when it’s something both people strongly want as much for themselves as for someone else, not when one person is just trying to give the other what they want or what they think they have to to get them to stick around.

I bet you can figure that if your boyfriend was going to have sex with someone, it’d be about something he really, really wanted, not just something he was like, “Well, I guess so,” especially if he risked becoming pregnant at 14. You probably don’t have a problem with taking the garbage out, but it’s also probably not your favorite thing to do. I’m going to assume you want your sexual experiences to be a whole lot different than taking the garbage out. For this to go well, it needs to be something you really want, rather than something you’d just accept.

I want to also add that the idea that your boyfriend is ready for all of this just because he wants it — or because you think he does due to his being a guy, an assumption that’s just as often not true as it is true — is iffy. I don’t know where your “can tell” about what guys want is coming from here, but even if you’re right, and this is something he wants, that doesn’t mean it’s something he’s ready for, or that he wants to do if you also don’t really want to and aren’t really ready. Guys being ready is as important as girls being really ready: having sex when they’re not really ready can mess them up, too. You suggest in your other post you’re not sure if he is ready: I’d pay attention to that gut feeling of yours, because you’re probably right.

It seems like your ideas about what he wants might not be about him as in individual, but about your ideas about guys. Not only is what you’re assuming not true at all of all guys, your boyfriend isn’t all guys: he’s just one guy. And just like girls, just like people who are 14, just like people who wear pants, people who are members of giant-sized groups like that are not all the same.

You know, if he gets the impression from you that he’s supposed to want certain kinds of sex with you now just because he’s a dude — an idea guys have pushed on them a lot, especially from other guys, and all the more if he hangs out with older guys — then you both might wind up having sex mostly because you both think that’s what you’re supposed to do, rather than it being what you both really want and feel is right for each of you, and for you as a young, new couple, right now. You don’t need me to tell you that people having sex together when they both don’t really want that yet or don’t really feel prepared for that yet does not an awesome sexual experience make. That’s also a kind of setup where you’re more likely to feel more distant from each other because of sex than closer, which probably also isn’t something you want. When people aren’t really talking and each person is making assumptions about the other or acting in ways they think the other wants, it doesn’t build intimacy: instead, it builds a wall between people instead that tends to make them more separate.

It’s clear that one big first step you haven’t taken yet is to stop guessing and to start really, and deeply, taking about all of this together. If either of you doesn’t have the trust or maturity to swing that just yet, that’s a sure sign now would be a lousy time to get more sexual. Whenever you do start really talking about this, do both of you a favor and don’t tell him what he wants and is ready for or what guys want. All that does is put pressure on you both, on top of leaving very little room for him as his own person, who just also happens to be a guy. Let him tell you how he feels: there’s no need for you to guess or make generalizations. He’s right there for you to find out his own real deal.

It might help to know we have a lot of study (and people’s hindsight) that shows us that the younger people are when they engage in intercourse and other kinds of sex with big risks, the less likely it is for positive outcomes to happen, and the more likely it is for things to go badly. In the studies that have been done about this where they talk about thing that make negative outcomes more likely, some of the things you have mentioned here come up: situations where people can’t give full consent or don’t even grok what that means, people making a lot of assumptions about sex or gender that aren’t realistic and are mostly based on media, stereotypes, or peers, a lack of communication and a feeling that sex isn’t optional, but something people have to do for someone else. In other words, you appear to be at a high risk of becoming that statistic if you choose to engage in sex anytime soon.

Since you’re asking for my advice about when I think sex — and it sounds like you mean intercourse when you say that, even though that’s only one kind of sex — would go best for you based on what you’ve told me, here it is: You’re about to seriously rush in. If you don’t want the crap that kind of rushing often results in, I’d advise you to SLOW DOWN. Take the time you really need to even know what these choices can mean, and to figure out if they’re right for you: that tends to take way more than eight weeks for someone to do when this kind of decision-making is new. Spend more time together getting to know one another better, talking these things through, and gradually exploring sex in slower steps rather than trying to jump into the deep end when you haven’t even learned how to doggy paddle yet. Those steps give us a lot of information about if further steps are or aren’t likely to be a good thing.

See how your relationship is going over, say, another six months, if it still even is going at all (with younger teens, on average, romantic relationships don’t last more than a few months). Take the time to talk about all of this together, a whole lot. There are high stakes here: be as thoughtful as you can with these choices, and ask for the same thoughtfulness from your boyfriend.

One thing I can’t do for a new user I haven’t talked over time is have any sense of who you are in a bigger way, and what you’re really capable of handling at this point in your life. Someone who knows you well can do that with you. Talk with someone older than you who you trust and who knows you really well. For the record, I don’t mean a years-older-than-you friend who thinks it’s a good idea to help young teenagers get wrecked at a party. That person is showing you they wouldn’t know a healthy, sound choice if it smacked them upside the head and that interaction with you is probably about entertaining themselves, not caring about your well-being. I’m talking about people with a good deal of life experience and maturity who you know and who know you and care about you; people who, even when you don’t always agree with them, you know want the very best for you.

In the case that you just don’t feel safe about that kind of conversation or openness with someone in your family, a next-best option is to have a talk like that with a healthcare provider. In the United States, what you share with a doctor about sex is private, and can’t be shared with parents unless you give permission. If you want absolute assurance of that, you can see someone at a Title X clinic, like a Planned Parenthood clinic. Not only can those people help you get informed about and prepared with things like safer sex, contraception and sexual negotiation, they can also do a great job of helping you think these choices through. They know and understand how important it is to you.

It might also help to sit down with pencil and paper and write out what you think you’d want and need for sex with a partner to be really right for you and great for you. For example, would you want to feel a lot less worried about messing up? How about wanting to have the things you needed to make sure you didn’t become pregnant before you wanted to? Some people feel most comfortable only having sex within relationships where they have secured a deeper commitment, or where they have been with someone for a certain length of time: if those things sound familiar to you, you can write down what you think would be right for you in that regard. How about how you would want to feel about your body or your own sexuality: whatever level of confidence you have about them now, and knowledge you have about them now, might more be better?

How about trust? Sometimes, especially when we’re younger, having sex with someone can mean negative social consequences, like taking a lot of crap from peers or people in school we don’t even know about having sex, when someone we have sex with tells others who tell others, who tell others… you get the picture. Most people don’t ever expect that to happen, but it happens often, especially when people rush into sex without taking time to build and establish trust with a partner and to have big talks about privacy needs. If your partner is a guy, he might get some social status from sex: if you’re a girl, you will likely lose some. That’s so messed-up, but it’s so very common. What about the other things you feel you want and need from a sexual partner? Just write it all out.

Those are just a few ideas of places to start. There is so much to think about with big sexual decisions, especially when we’ve no experience making them, that if we try and do it all in our heads, it can make thing less clear instead of more clear. If we can put it all down somewhere and get a clearer look at it, it can be easier to sort through. And if, when you talk with your boyfriend about any of this, he makes clear he has been thinking about engaging in sex with you soon, you can ask him to do the same thing, and then you both can sit down together with your lists and get a much more real, honest picture of what both of your readiness really looks like. It might also be a lot easier to start talking together with that kind of clarity.

I’m going to assume that, like most people, you want any sex you have to be sex you feel good about, not just during, but before and after, too. I’m going to assume you want the sexual relationships you have in life to be as great as they can possibly be. In order to make both those outcomes the most likely, you’re just going to want to take more time than this.

I’m going to leave you some links I think will help you, and can get you started with the kind of information you need to know in order to make these choices smartly. Go ahead through them yourself, and then, if you and your boyfriend are talking seriously about moving past making out anytime soon, share them with him, too, and you can talk about them together and use them as ways to start talking more. If you want to talk more about all of this with us, we’re always around for that at our message boards, where you can either keep talking to me, talk to a volunteer, or talk to other users who are peers.

But, in a nutshell? I think you’re going to feel a whole lot better, and be more likely, in time, to have the kind of sexual experiences you probably want, if you keep things at the pace they are or even slow them down.

Don’t forget: if you have the idea you have to “give” a partner sex in order to keep them around or interested, you’re forgetting that you are already giving them a lot by spending your time with them, and investing your heart in them. You, all by yourself, in heart and mind, are a heck of a thing (even though you’re not a “thing”) to share. For someone who really likes you and cares about you, that is going to be pretty amazing as it is. No one who cares about you and is really into you is going to want you to be more sexual with them until you really feel good about it, ready for it, and really, really want to do that. In fact, to someone like that, doing anything you don’t deeply want to or before you’re ready would be the last thing they want, not the first.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/09/30/sure-boyfriend-wants-right-time/feed/0Get Real! She Won’t Stop Pressuring Me for Sex and Babieshttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/09/09/wont-stop-pressuring-babies/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wont-stop-pressuring-babies
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/09/09/wont-stop-pressuring-babies/#commentsFri, 09 Sep 2011 07:05:24 +0000If and when we want to have sex in such a way where we only think of our own wants and needs, we can always have that easily with masturbation. But once more than one person is involved in sex, more than one person needs to be seen, heard and considered.

I’m in an on again-off again type relationship with my “girlfriend.” We get along and everything, but on some things we don’t see eye to eye. We’ve had sex before, and that’s kind of the problem. She keeps pressuring me into having sex! You don’t really hear it this way with guys, but it’s the truth. She knows what she wants, and she wants it now! It’s not that I don’t want to have sex with her, or that I don’t LIKE having sex with her, but sometimes I just enjoy romance. Or just hanging out. Sex isn’t everything. And another thing: she wants a baby! She’s nineteen, and I’m eighteen. I’ve reminded her that neither of us drive or have jobs. I just graduated high school (at the time I was still IN school) but still, I can’t change her mind. So I don’t really know what to say. How can i get through to her that sex isn’t everything, and that we’re definitely not ready for a baby?

Heather Corinna replies:

I’m so sorry that you’ve found yourself in what sounds like some big time bad-news dynamics. There are some things where not being in agreement isn’t a big deal, or is problematic, but not massive. However, having conflict about sex and reproduction like this, especially if one person refuses to honor the other in what they do not want, usually is massive.

You know, we do hear about people of all genders, including guys, experiencing sexual pressure from partners. I’m well aware that this is by no means only something that happens to women or girls, and by no means is something only men or boys, do. I’d say that at least a few times a month, I enter into a discussion with a girl who is pressuring or coercing a boyfriend and need to explain to her that guys can not be ready for sex, too, that guys can not want to have sex sometimes, too, and that real consent isn’t just something it’s important guys get from girls: it’s something everyone always need to seek out from everyone, only moving forward with anything sexual if the other person does give full and enthusiastic consent, and not making a move or stopping if the other person isn’t doing that.

I’m also aware that a whole lot of guys who experience feeling pressured feel very alone in it, like they’re the only ones it’s happening to, or the only ones who aren’t delighted to be pushed into sex. I want to make sure that you know that you’re not alone. This does happen to other guys — probably more than you or are aware of — and very few people are ever happy to be pressured for sex they don’t want, don’t feel ready for or want in a balance with everything else, rather than to the exclusion of everything else. I think it’s also safe to say very few people are happy in an unhealthy relationship, which it sounds like you might be in.

Same goes with a partner pushing parenting or babymaking. You might not hear guys in your life talking about feeling like you are around that or sex, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. What that silence probably indicate isn’t that this isn’t happening, but that a lot of guys probably feel like it isn’t okay to voice it when it is, or that it isn’t okay to feel unhappy about it. Of course, with both of these issues, there can also always be masculinity issues to counter: some guys feel pretty strongly that they’re not “real men” or masculine enough, or other men aren’t, if and when a guy finds himself in the position of being manipulated, pressured, coerced or abused by a woman, or wants to decline sex or have it less frequently than it’s made available. Hopefully, you already know that’s not true. If not, please know that’s not true. And it’s also the kind of attitude which really hurts men instead of helping them.

We also hear more about reproductive coercion — when a partner pressures the other, through verbal threats, physical aggression, or birth-control sabotage, to become pregnant or co-create a pregnancy, which is what it sounds like has been happening here — when it’s women (usually the people who can become pregnant) being coerced. There’s one sound reason for that, which is that in those cases, it’s about all the kinds of things you could be pushed into here, but with the huge added issue of it being something that’s happening to your whole body and health. It also is, to my knowledge, more common that way, but really, we might not know, especially since study on reproductive coercion is still new as a whole. Hopefully, over time, it will address how anyone can experience this kind of coercion, and how very much no one should ever feel they have the right to involve someone in creating a pregnancy who does not consent to be involved and does not want to be. But no matter who it is happening to, this can be some really serious stuff that is pretty unhealthy, and can also potentially derail your life.

If your girlfriend is not accepting your no to sex and not accepting your no to co-creating a pregnancy or becoming a parent, my advice anytime anyone finds themselves in any kind of relationship or interaction where sexual pressuring, reproductive pressuring or both are going on is to get out of it. That is always the very best advice I can give, and the advice I know is most likely to elicit the best result for a person being pressured or coerced, including steering them towards a life and partnerships without those things in them. This is not the stuff healthy, happy relationships are made of.

In sexual relationships and interactions which are healthy and equitable, anytime someone says no to something, or “not yet,” “not now,” or “not so often please,” the other person respects that, rather than stepping all over it, dismissing it, or trying to argue or otherwise steamroll over that person to get what they want for themselves. When it comes to sex and consent, no always needs to trump yes, and that just shouldn’t be that big of a deal. You’re right: sex isn’t everything. No one will die if they don’t have sex with somebody, for crying out loud. For sure, sex with a partner can be really nice, even awesome, but it’s not food, air or water. It’s a privilege, not a necessity or a right.

If and when we want to have sex in such a way where we only need to think of our needs, any of us can always have that very easily. If we are able to engage in sex with a partner, we are also able to masturbate. But if there is anyone else directly involved, we don’t get to have our wants be the only ones that matter or which always come first. Once more than one person is involved in sex, more than one person needs to be seen, heard and considered. Hopefully, that’s a gimme in a relationship or sexual interaction, because emotionally healthy people aren’t going to want to engage in sex with someone who also doesn’t want to.

But it sounds to me like the person you’ve been with might not be very emotionally healthy, and isn’t understanding or accepting that in these things that involve you, they can’t just be about her and what she wants.

What I want for you — what I want for everyone — is a partner who respects you and who cares for you. Honoring our feelings about when and if to have sex and make babies is pretty ground-zero stuff as far as both those things go. It looks like you’re with someone who either wants things you just don’t and can’t see anyone in the picture besides herself or who can see you, and hear your objections, but doesn’t care. Either way, that’s not good. It’s also potentially dangerous for you when it comes to your feelings and the arc of the life that you want.

Reproductive coercion is considered a serious abuse, and I think that’s sound. Our right, whatever our gender, to decide if and when, to the degree we can control it, we want to become pregnant or co-create a pregnancy and to become parents is a vital, essential human right. This is also an issue where another tiny person can potentially come into play who doesn’t get any choices.

If she becomes pregnant, you, as the person who isn’t yourself pregnant, cannot dictate what she does with her pregnancy outside giving or withholding your consent for an adoption. If she chooses to remain pregnant and parent, then that’s just going to be how it is, including financial support of some level and then whatever else you would feel you wanted to do, or felt was right to do, when it comes to parenting. And that would mean with her, by the way, in some way. In other words, the way this person is behaving now? In one way or another, you’d be stuck dealing with her as a co-parent. If you had a kid you really cared about, and her behavior with them was similar to the way she’s behaving with you, that could equal a lot of full-time heartbreak for you. I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that someone who can’t respect a partner’s no with something this huge is probably not going to be a great parent. This is a kind of behavior that really has legs in terms of how many people’s lives it can potentially really screw up.

I don’t mean to be all Doomsday here, I just want to impress some very possible scenarios and very probably risks you’d be taking if you stay involved sexually with this person who I hear you saying, very clearly, is pretty hell-bent on getting what she wants regardless of what you do. There are a lot of reasons to make our sexual decisions carefully, and this is a biggie. Choosing to be with someone sexually where pregnancy can happen who you know is in profound disagreement with you about what to do should a pregnancy happen, or worse still, who might aim to co-create a pregnancy against your will is a very risky situation to put yourself in, whether you’re someone who can become pregnant or you’re not.

I think being pushed into sex is a very serious abuse, too, one which is often a crime. Somebody pushing a boundary they didn’t know was there, then totally getting it and backing off when you state it is one thing. But when someone has a pattern of coercion, then we need to know we’re likely dealing with a pattern of abuse, which, like abuse tends to, will probably also escalate over time. All very serious, which is why I’m giving you very serious advice.

So, my very, very best advice if this sounds like those things? Get outta this. Pronto.

If you have already tried to get through to her with these things and have not been able to, you’re probably not going to be able to. It’s not that complicated, after all, and really, any of us should only need to hear this stuff once. If someone keeps hearing your no’s again and again and again and isn’t responding, you have to know they’re not going to. And in the meantime, not only does trying to stand up for yourself again and again keep wearing you and how you feel about yourself down, it keeps putting you at risk of some major hazards. It’s kind of like standing outside when there’s a tornado and telling it to go away instead of getting yourself to a shelter. You can’t compel a tornado to chill out with logic or emotional appeals. The same goes for emotionally unhealthy, manipulative, controlling or abusive people, the kind of people who push others into sex or reproduction. You can’t magically change them or get them to behave differently: the best you can do, the best any of us can do, is to stop enabling them and get away from them, focusing on keeping ourselves safe and sound.

To boot? You just don’t sound happy. That’s hardly a shocker, but there’s just no reason to stay in a relationship like this that’s making you unhappy, that has these kinds of conflicts in it, and where it sounds like it’s pretty much a one-man show that’s not about you.

If you don’t feel able to leave right now, or aren’t sure you need to — like maybe she’s not pushing these things as much as it sounds to me like she is — then alternately, I’d suggest a few things. For one, I’d make it very, very clear that you do NOT want to reproduce any time soon, and if that’s what she wants with someone right now, she needs to choose someone else who wants that, and that isn’t you. Period. No negotiating, that’s just your bottom line. Next? You set another hard limit where you make clear you have felt sexually pressured, explain how, and that those behaviors need to stop, like yesterday. If and when she asks for something sexual and you say anything but yes — and because you want to — she needs to back the heck off and stay backed off. If she just “wants what she wants now” and can’t deal with that, she needs to know that is not the way it works in relationships with other people. She has the option to only think about her own wants, but not if she’s going to be in a relationship with you and want those things from you.

If you continue to be sexual with this person, I can’t say enough how important it obviously is that you either nix the kinds of sex which can create a pregnancy, or if you are going to do that, that you are religiously compliant with the methods of birth control you can use. While your choice in methods is limited, you can at least double up by both using condoms and practicing withdrawal, two methods you can be in charge of. Combining those two would bring the risk of pregnancy down to awfully close to zero. But frankly, were I in your shoes, I wouldn’t be taking any risks at all with the way it sounds like she’s been talking. Instead, I’d be keeping my body far away from this person.

I’d also suggest you find someone in your life you trust to tell about all of this, someone you know cares about you, is supportive of you, and who will respect the fact that no, it’s not okay for anyone to pressure you, no matter what your gender is. You’ve got my feedback, but having someone who knows you in-person to give theirs and also just have your back would be even better. If you do leave this person, and they go off the rails about it, then you also have someone to help you deal with that.

I think just getting away from this is your best choice, though. I’d see anything else as a concession, and one that not only puts you at risk of some unwanted consequences, but which also is likely to make sure you remain as unhappy as you are, or become even more unhappy.

If this person wants a partner where the relationship is mostly sexual, and not with the level of other things, including romance, that you want, she can find someone else who wants that same dynamic. If this person wants a partner who also wants to create a pregnancy with her right now, she can find someone like that, too. But that person is not you, obviously. And that’s something she needs to respect and accept, not try to change or dismiss. The same stuff goes for you, too, though: if you want a partner who does NOT do the things she’s doing, and who does consider what you want — and to whom that’s really important — you can have that, too.

Of course, you’re much more likely to find someone who wants a relationship where both of you matter than she is to find someone who only wants a relationship where she does. And no matter how you slice it, you’d be getting the better deal then whoever signs on to this kind of thing with her or than she would. Nobody wins in one-sided relationships: everybody gets cheated, because that just doesn’t offer anyone the really good stuff we can share with someone else.

If you need some motivation for getting gone, know that this relationship is likely keeping you from interactions and openness which could open the door to a much healthier, happier relationship without these dynamics. One where the other person wanted the same kinds of things you do, or when they didn’t, totally honored the fact that you don’t. One where no one is pressuring anyone for anything, including sex or babies. One where when you said you really did not want something or were not ready for something, rather than the other person walking all over you, they’d take that seriously and do their dardnest to make sure they were not putting you in the position of ever having to do anything you didn’t want to do or didn’t feel ready for. One where the other person may want what they want, but they care a whole lot about what you want — and don’t want — too.

Wouldn’t that be awesome? You bet it would. Wouldn’t it suck to miss out on something so awesome because you chose to stay in something so miserable? Hells, yes.

So, no you probably can’t change her mind, and probably can’t change her behavior, either. But you can certainly change how much you’re impacted by it, or if you are at all by opting out. That is something that you have the power and ability to do. You said this has been off-again, on-again. I think it’s past time to turn it off and leave it off.

Along with my very best wishes, I’m going to leave you a few links I think might help you evaluate all of this, make some positive moves that really are best for you, and know more of what to look for in healthy interactions and relationships:

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/09/09/wont-stop-pressuring-babies/feed/2Get Real! He Wants Something Sexual, But I Feel Uneasy About Ithttp://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/08/26/wants-something-sexual-feel-uneasy-about/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wants-something-sexual-feel-uneasy-about
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/08/26/wants-something-sexual-feel-uneasy-about/#commentsFri, 26 Aug 2011 12:02:03 +0000How do you tell a partner that you're not comfortable with something they want to do, whether you have sexual abuse in your history or not? You tell them you're not comfortable with something they want to do.

I’m 14, and my boyfriend wants me to give him dry sex, I am very uneasy about this because I’ve been sexually abused before, what should I tell him?

Heather Corinna replies:

I think you just said two things you could tell him right there.

“I am very uneasy about this,” or “I am very uneasy about this because I have been sexually abused.” Whichever you feel most comfortable with, both of those things are fine things to say, things I think we should be able to say with anyone we’re very intimate with or thinking about being very intimate with.

You can follow them up with what your uneasiness means for you in terms of your answer. Do you want to decline his invitation to engaging in dry sex? If so, then you say you feel uneasy, and follow that up with saying no, you don’t want to do that now. You don’t have to explain any more than that if you don’t want to or don’t feel comfortable explaining more. That right there – or heck, just “No,” all by itself — should always be enough for anyone who actually cares about you and respects you to just accept and know that’s how it is, just like if you invited someone to come to a party you were having and they said no. If we extend an invitation to someone for something, whether it’s having sex or going out for coffee, we always need to know they may decline that invitation, and if and when they do, we always need to be okay with that and accept it.

Or, maybe you do want to explore this kind of sex with him, but need certain things to feel safe and good about it, like more time dating and getting to know one another, more time to build communication skills and trust, a certain kind of commitment, or time with him or even just with yourself to feel comfortable enough telling him about the abuse you survived. If it’s like that, and you don’t want to outrightly say no, but need things you don’t have now or yet to say yes, then you can tell him what those things are that you need first. If getting to those things is going to take some time, he should respect that and allow you that time without pressure.

One thing you might need is for sex of any kind with him, be it dry sex or something else, to be about something you both really, really want to do and share, rather than something he wants you to “give” him for him.

Catch the big difference there? Sex with a partner that’s really about more than one person isn’t about giving someone something: it’s about doing, sharing and co-creating something together, where, if you want to stick with the idea of give/get, both people are giving and both people are getting. It’s also ideally about both people wanting something as much for themselves as for the other person, not about one person wanting something that is only or mostly for themselves and one person not really wanting something at all who just does that thing to give the other person what they want.

We’ve got a word for sex that’s only or mostly about one person: masturbation. If and when someone (including you!) wants sex that’s really just for them and only or mostly about what they want, that’s not the right time and space to have sex with someone else. That’s the time and space to have sex alone, with our own two hands (or whatever else we want to that isn’t another being). Then sex gets to be all about us and only for us, no problem. One really good earmark of someone’s maturity around sex and sexual relationships is when they are able to recognize when what they want is masturbation — sex only for themselves — and when it’s sex with a partner — where everything needs to be about everyone involved very mutually, not just or mostly themselves.

I also want to let you know, just in case you don’t, that even if you hadn’t been sexually abused in the past, and either felt uneasy for others reasons, or didn’t feel uneasy at all, but just were not interested in this, it’d be okay to say no.

Just because someone wants something sexual doesn’t ever, ever mean someone else is obligated to give it to them, even if and when two people are in a relationship together that already has included and does include sex. A sexual or romantic relationship isn’t about anyone agreeing to always do sexual things with someone. Rather, when sex is part of our relationship, or we agree to be in a sexual relationship, all that means is that sex CAN be part of that relationship, at whatever times it — whatever kind of sex we’re talking about — is what both people want, feel ready for and feel good about.

People don’t always feel hungry at the same time or want to eat at the same times. That’s okay: people can eat together when they both want to at the same time, and eat separately when they don’t. Sometimes one person wants to see a movie, but the other person isn’t in the mood at all, so they don’t want to go. That’s okay: one person can see a movie while the other person stays home.In some partnerships, one person can want to have kids at a given time when another doesn’t. That’s okay. People can wait until that’s what they both want, and if they never want the same things, part ways and seek out others who DO want the same things. Just like with those things, the same goes with sex. Sure, sometimes we might make some compromises, like if one person really, really wants to do something, and the other only kind of does, but feels okay giving it a go to see if it’s something they enjoy. But we need to always make sure that the compromises we’re making involve a reasonable amount of give on both sides, and don’t involve compromising ourselves or the things we know we really want or need to be and feel safe and okay and whole.

Whether people have survived abuse or not, these things are important in healthy sexual relationships or other sexual interactions. If your boyfriend hasn’t been sexually abused, I’m betting there are some things he might feel uneasy about or not want to do sexually a partner might want himself. Just because someone hasn’t been abused doesn’t mean they’ll feel comfortable with anything and everything sexual, or that they will always be in the mood to do something sexual when a partner is. I’m betting it’s also important to him that with anything sexual, it’s about him and what he wants, not just about what you do. I’m betting that he wants to feel he has the room and the right to say no to things and have you respect that. These are things everyone should have and that people need to have for sex to be most likely to be positive and beneficial, rather than negative or harmful.

However, it’s pretty common for survivors of sexual abuse or assault to need some real time and support in healing from assault, and to make sure that we’re only in relationships and situations that are sound for us in the place we’re at with that healing, and as survivors. For instance, while we certainly don’t always have to tell someone we survived assault if we don’t want to, when we’re brand new to consensual sex or new to asserting ourselves sexually, it’s usually a good idea to be sure any partners we’re with are people who have the maturity to understand that we can need some extra things other people might not, and who truly have the capacity to be open to those things or provide them. For example, getting triggered — being reminded in some way of abuse or assault and then having a reaction to those memories or feelings — is something that can happen when you get sexual as a survivor. When that happens, you might need some extra care, and your partner will sometimes need to be able to not only stop sex very quickly, but switch from being in a sexual headspace to one that’s about caring for you in other ways in that moment. They’ll need the maturity and self-esteem to not take that personally or freak out. Not every partner is going to have those things, especially during stages of life when people can be pretty centered in their own headspace and find it challenging to really understand, feel and work with someone else’s.

As well, it can be super-extra important for survivors to avoid anyone who we feel in any way obligated to be sexual with. That can really stand in the way of our overall healing, and in constructing a sexuality and sex life that’s healthy. One of the things sexual abuse can sometimes leave us wit is a feeling that our sexual value to others is our only value or that our sexuality or bodies don’t totally belong to us. Over time, and with help, we can usually get through those feelings and know they’re not true, but when abuse was recent or we haven’t gotten far in healing, it’s often harder not to believe those kinds of things. So, we’re usually really not helped by any people, relationships or dynamics that make those things seem more true rather than less true.

Again, it’s not like those things aren’t important with everyone, not just survivors. They are important for everyone. But for people who have been harmed sexually, and who are working on healing, dynamics like that can potentially make some extra hardships or hurt for us when we’re already working so hard to recover from hardships or hurt we have already been through. They can also can hold us back in our process of healing and make it all take longer or be more challenging, which is the last thing anyone wants or needs. healing takes long enough and is often challenging enough as it is.

So, I’d just check in with yourself right now about a couple things. The first thing to think about is if you feel ready to have any kind of sexual relationship at all yet and if that’s something you really want now or any time soon.

There’s no right answer to that, just what you feel you want and need and feel is best for you. If that’s not something you want or not something you feel ready for, your best bet is to try not to put yourself in the position where someone thinks sex is what you want or has any expectation of sex. No one needs that kind of pressure, after all, and it’s usually best for both people who want and need very different things to just opt out right at the start rather than to enter into a relationship where they’re probably just going to make each other miserable struggling around such a big difference.

If you want to still date and have romantic relationships, you can still have those, you just want to be clear to people you’re dating that for right now, that doesn’t include any kind of sex with you. You, like everyone else, get to have these limits and boundaries if you need them, just like you, like everyone else, get to have limits and boundaries if and when you do choose to be in a sexual relationship.

When you put your limits out there clearly from the start (or at the point when it seems like you and someone else might be thinking about or considering some kind of sex), the people who do want that can seek out someone else who does, and you can avoid being in the position to have to feel at all pressured or obligated to do anything you don’t want to or that doesn’t feel right for you. Being assertive and straightforward like that also can help you identify people to date who are good choices for you right now: people who are just fine with that, or who even don’t want to get involved with sex right now for their own reasons. That’s good for your healing process, but it also makes dating a lot more fun. Knowing you’re pretty much on the same page with that other person can make it much easier to feel relaxed and safe and to enjoy dating, rather than having it be something that stresses you out or makes you feel crummy.

If you are going to choose to get involved in a relationship that is sexual in any way, or that you think you might choose to make sexual at some point, then the next thing to just evaluate is who you’re with, and if they seem to you like the kind of person you feel you can feel safe and be safe with at this stage in your life.

For instance, when we feel safe, even if we’re still working on our assertiveness or self-esteem, we should feel pretty able to just say no to things we don’t want without worrying the other person won’t respect that or will react badly. We should also feel like we’re not obligated to be sexual with that person and feel sure they don’t think we are, either. We should — and once more, this is ideal for everyone, anyway, not just abuse survivors — be sure anyone we are with sexually, or think we might get sexual with is someone who understands how important it is for sex to be about something that’s really mutual, just as much about what we want as it is about what they want.

So, even in terms of dating this person right now, I’d take some time to think about all of that, and consider what you think this person’s capabilities and abilities are in this respect. If you’re iffy about any of these things, they are certainly things you can talk about together, and things you can talk about without disclosing your abuse, too, if you don’t feel ready for that yet. It’s also always okay to kind of back things up in a relationship: if you feel like, for example, his asking for this kind or other kinds of sex has happened too fast or too soon, you can always ask to slow everything down to the kind of pace that you feel comfortable with.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had any counseling around your abuse, but if you haven’t, I encourage you to seek it out. There are lots of things good counseling can help us with when surviving and healing from abuse, and that includes helping us to learn skills and tools to navigate sexual and other intimate relationships. If you had a hard time with the things I asked you to think about up there, that’s something else a counselor could help you think about and make decisions with. If you haven’t had any professional help in healing like that, and you’re interested, you can always drop a line to us here and we can help you find that for yourself.

One last thing? While we’re not always going to feel comfortable disclosing previous sexual abuse with people just because it is something we’re usually very vulnerable around, and often want to keep private from people we don’t know we can trust, I hope you know that having been abused is nothing for you to feel ashamed about, or keep to yourself out of the idea that it’s something shameful about you. It’s not. You didn’t do anything to anyone: someone else chose to hurt you.

A lot of us in the world have been hurt or harmed in some way. That doesn’t make us anything but human, and vulnerable to harm and hurt like all human beings can be. It doesn’t mean we’re broken, or damaged goods or sullied or any of the other negative things we can feel like we are, partly because abuse can make us feel that way for a while, and partly because some people who are ignorant about trauma and abuse say things like that (often not realizing they’re acting or sounding a whole lot like the people who abused us).

So, I hope that if you feel uneasy with any kind of sex, or sex with this person because of your abuse, it’s about where you’re at in your healing process or with still developing trust in this relationship, but NOT about any feelings or ideas that being abused means that, when it’s the right time and situation for you, you can’t be sexual in the ways that you truly want to be just like everyone else. Because you can. The main trick to that is just making your healing and other self-care a priority, and making yourself as a person whose own sexual wants and boundaries matter a priority. That absolutely includes nixing anything you don’t feel very, very good about doing sexually, not just for or with someone else, but for and with yourself.